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SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY: 



SHOWING 



THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL AND SCIENTIFIC OUTCOME 
OF ORIGINAL CHRISTIANITY 



IN ITS CONFLICT WITH 



SURVIVING ANCIENT HEATHENISM. 



BY 



PHILIP C. FEIESE. 



IVlArill 1890 



CHICAGO: 

S. C. GKIGGS & COMPANY, 

1890. 






Copyright, 1890, 
Bx S. C. GKIGGS AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

THE SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY, called Semitic from the 
Author of its great Revival, — being Man's first 
thought as an isolated person, before the invention 
of Language, and being conducted by means of the 
Sensuous Ideas, — was the Normal, Instinctive, Origi- 
nal Philosophy, ______ 1-35 

1. Thought without Language in the Isolated Individual. 

Philosophy, many systems, begins in childhood with 
Instinctive Thought, _ 1 

2. Instinctive Thought of the unlearned may be Philosophy. 

The Higher Law, _______ 4 

3. Revolutions of the Past and of the Future, by Instinctive 

Thought, _________ 7 

4. The means employed by Instinctive Thought are the Sensu- 

ous Ideas, _________8 

5. There is but one Philosophy, — the Doctrine of the King- 

dom of God, — the Semitic Philosophy, 9 

6. Thought before Language in the Isolated Individual, _ 12 

7. Conservative Analysis : of Consciousness, _ _ _ .12 

8. Conservative Analysis : of the action of Man's spirit, _ _ 16 

9. Conservative Analysis : of Man's body, . _ _ - 17 

10. The Sensuous Ideas, _______ 20 

11. The Imaginative Ideas, _______ 20 

12. Enumeration of the Modifications of Speculative and Prac- 

tical Action, ________ 22 

13. Feeling, __________ 23 

14. Use of the representative Sensuous Ideas, without Lan- 

guage, ___-__.._. 23 

iii 



IV CONTENTS. 

15. We know things as they are, _ 30 

16. A universal concrete notion, ______ 32 

17. It alternates in its analysis with its artificial synthesis, and 

furnishes the whole domain of Philosophy, _ . .33 



CHAPTER II. 

MAN'S ORIGINAL PHILOSOPHY, or First Thought, 
when in conscious relation to other spirits, first, 
without Language, in Natural Society, then with 
Language, in Artificial Society, was at first in 
both cases Normal ; until Ancient Artificial Society, 
by the lapse of Man's Thought through the abuse 
of Language into Idolatry and by the reduction 
of his practical action through Idolatry into Crime, 
became, as the union of idolatry and crime, ab- 
normal, and was called ancient heathenism, _ 35-64 

18. Man, still without Language, in conscious relations to other 

spirits, sees moving, material, outward objects, _ . 35 

19. Organic World, Inorganic World, _ _ _ _ .36 

20. One Superior Spirit, _ _ _ _ . _ .37 

21. Practical action, nourishment of the body, _ _ .38 

22. Association with fellow-men for this purpose, _ _ .40 

23. Man cooks his food, and thereby observes Artificial as well 

as Natural Qualities of Matter, _ _ _ _ _ 41 

24. Before treating of the uses of Language in Society, some- 

thing of the nature of Language is here anticipated, to 
explain the Sensuous Ideas. Language externalizes the 
Sensuous Ideas, ________ 42 

25. Space, Time, Gravitation, ______ 43 

26. Mysteries created by Science, _ _ _ _ ■ _ .44 

27. Faith may be acquired without Language, _ _ .45 

28. Primitive Natural Society without Language, Artificial 

Society with Language, ______ 46 

29. Natural Society, the Family, associated by the original 

Social Contract between God and Man, _ _ _ 46 

30. Moral obligation from Man's relations to plant life and 

animal life, ._ 47 



CONTENTS. V 

31. In Human Society the moral obligations of Man to Man 

arise under the original and continuing Social Contract, _ 49 

32. The five elementary Social Activities, Society an Integral 

Whole. Natural Society Undenominational, based on 
the First Principle, cannot be historically traced in its 
development by Language into Artificial Society. Nor 
can the origin of Language be traced in history, _ .50 

33. Language, a system of externalized Sensuous Ideas, was 

probably suggested by Prayer. Superiority of the Sen- 
suous Ideas, ________ 53 

34. Moral Evil arose from Idolatry, and Idolatry, from the 

abuse of Language, _______ 55 

35. The absolute sway of Idolatry over Ancient Society, result- 

ing in Despotism, Sacerdotalism, Offensive War, and 
Slavery, 57 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DOCTRINE AND THE PRACTICE OF THE KING- 
dom of god, being the revival by jesus of 
Normal Artificial Society from Ancient Heathen- 
ism BY MEANS OF THE REVIVAL OF THE SPECULATIVE 

Side, and the consequent Revival of the Practical 
Side of the Original or Semitic Philosophy, _ 65-98 

36. Normal Artificial Society revived in Modern Civilization, 

or Christianity, from Ancient Heathenism, which was 
universal, at the birth of Jesus, as Orientalism, or Des- 
potism with Idolatry, Polytheistic and Monotheistic, — 
the latter among the Jews, ______ 65 

37. It was necessary that the Reformer of Polytheistic Idolatry 

should be a Jew, ________ 68 

38. Jesus of Nazareth, as a Jew, began at his home among 

Jews his reform movement, ______ 70 

39. He summed his doctrine in the formula " Kingdom of God," 

expounded it by oral speech, addressed to the Common 
People and his Disciples, and left nothing in writing, 
thus showing his distrust of Written Language, . _ 70 

40. Exposition of the formula " Kingdom of God," and its two 

terms, "Kingdom" and "God," _ _ _ _ _ 71 



VI CONTENTS. 

41. Summary of the meaning of this formula. On its specula- 

tive side, it is the Semitic Philosophy. On its practical 
side, it is the Organization, or practical Constitution of 
Normal Artificial Society, ______ 76 

42. The primary speculative and practical activities of Man 

are derived from the First Principle. Corresponding to 
them are the five universal associations, or Integral 
Organs of Society, _______ 77 

43. The Undenominational Association of Jesus with his Dis- 

ciples was the first typical Christian Community, _ _ 79 

44. Representation was almost the only development of early 

Christianity, ________ 82 

45. The adoption of Sacerdotalism and Despotism by the Chris- 

tian Community, about the beginning of the third century, 83 

46. The compromise with Constantine, resulting in the Nicene 

creed of impure Monotheism, _ _ _ _ .84 

47. The Christian Sacerdotal Machine, and the Christian Mili- 

tary Machine, or Government, _ _ _ _ _ 86 

48. The inward development of Christianity, its popular tradi- 

tion, ____---__. 87 

49. The Sacerdotal Order subordinated the popular tradition to 

their Oriental dogmas, _______ 89 

50. After the lapse of sixteen hundred years, it is difficult to 

assign the motives of those engaged in the movement or 
Eevolution of the Sacerdotal Order. The Inquisition, _ 89 

51. The State's complicity with the Inquisition of the Church, 91 

52. Oriental maxims of Conquest and of Oppression adopted by 

the Military Governments of Europe, _ _ _ .92 

53. The Christian Community inaugurated by Jesus relapsed 

into modern forms of Ancient Heathenism, _ _ _ 92 

54. It also developed into forms of Modern Civilization in the 

Eepublic of Letters and Art, and the Republic of In- 
dustry, __.__-.-- 92 

55. Conflict between the Sacerdotal Order and the State for 

Mastery, _________ 95 

56. There is for Man a controlling and attracting Unity, and a 

consequent Simplicity in his View of the Universe, — one 
source of Normal Action, one cause of Moral Evil, one 
Normal Order of Society, the description of which must 
be the Ideal Social Constitution, _ _ _ _ .95 



CONTENTS. Vll 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE IDEAL WRITTEN SOCIAL CONSTITUTION,— being 

A DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVIVED, PREDOMINANTLY SPECU- 
LATIVE Social Side of the Semitic Philosophy, 99-149 

57. The Artificial Constitution of the "Kingdom of God," as 

Normal Society, or Modern Civilization, _ _ .99 

58. Article I. — The common features of all the Integral Organs 

of Society, _________ 100 

59. Article II. — The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Letters 

and Art, _________ 105 

60. Article III.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of the 

Church, _________ 109 

61. Article IV. — The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Industry, 115 

62. Article V. — The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Public 

Charity, _________ 125 

63. Article VI. — The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Govern- 

ment, with its Four Partial Organs ; namely, its Political 
Parties, its Regular Legislature, its Body of Executive 
Officers, and its Legal Profession, _ _ _ _ 128 

64. The Government's Political Parties are Honorable Associ- 

ations of the People, _ _ 131 

65. The Government's Regular, or Denominational Legislature, 134 

66. The Government's Body of Executive Officers, _ _ 135 

67. The Government's Legal Profession, with its Judicial and 

its Practicing Branches, ______ 139 

68. The Government's extraordinary, general or local, Unde- 

nominational, Representative Convention, for exercising 
the People's reserved Powers, whether Legislative, Execu- 
tive, or Judicial, as required by the occasion, _ _ 146 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GENERAL SOCIAL REFORMATION, as the revived, 
predominantly practical, Social Side of the Semitic 
Philosophy, and called Practical Christianity, or 
Developed Modern Civilization, — attainable by all 
Monotheistic Races and Nations, _ _ _ 150-210 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

69. Semitic Philosophy, an exposition of the Kingdom of God, 

as a reality, a fact, . _ _ _ _ _ _ 150 

70. The relation of man's spirit to his body, is used to explain 

the relation of God to the whole Inorganic world, _ _ 151 

71. The Kingdom of God abstractly and concretely regarded, _ 152 

72. The action of spirit, being Integral, frames man's body as a 

conductor of spiritual action, and as an instrument, _ 154 

73. Normal association of all men with God, Social Contract, 

Social Organization, _______ 155 

74. General View of the errors and irregularities in each of the 

Integral Organs that hinder its Normal action, _ _ 156 

75. A General Reformation of Society, with Reform of the 

Reformers, must be effected by a competent knowledge of 
the First Principle, _______ 159 

76. The shortcoming of the Republic of Letters and Art in 

apprehending and teaching the First Principle, is its 
entertainment of Oriental false so-called science, _ .163 

77. The most prominent practical error of the Republic of the 

Church, is its failure to adopt a Normal Organization, 
and its consequent control by an Abnormal Ecclesiastical 
Ring, _____ 168 

78. The greatest practical error of the Republic of Industry is 

its failure to secure, as a whole, a separate and independ- 
ent Industrial Organization ; a failure resulting in general 
Industrial Anarchy and War, _ _ _ _ _ 175 

79. The most serious practical error of the Republic of Charity 

is likewise its failure to secure a separate and independent 
Charitable Organization ; a failure that accounts for the 
want of concentration and of energy in its charitable 
efforts, _________ 181 

80. The practical error of faulty Organization prevails not only 

in the Republic of Government as a whole ; but also in 
each of its Partial Organs, and in its extraordinary Un- 
denominational (governmental Conventions, _ _ .187 

81. In the Political Parties the want of efficient Normal Organ- 

ization prevails, along with Abnormal, non-representative 
Rings, _________ 188 

82. The Governmental Legislature, virtually composed of Com- 

mittees elected by the Political Parties, fails to carry out 
the Principle of Home Rule in many countries, _ _ 197 



CONTENTS. IX 

83. The Body of Executive Officers in the Civil Service, the 

Military Service, and the Naval Service, should have 
their appointments dependent on the same kind of exam- 
ination, respectively, with the same tenure of office, and 
privilege of promotion, ______ 201 

84. The Legal Profession fails to attain its proper degree of 

influence and of usefulness, owing to its defective Organ- 
ization, which does not include, as it should, all its mem- 
bers of all its classes, combined by Representation in 
National, International, and, in time, Interrace, Associa- 
tions or Guilds, _._____. 202 

85. The Government's Undenominational Organization, by rep- 

resentative Conventions, called to exercise the Reserved 
Sovereign Powers of the People, is defective, owing to the 
absence in it of a systematic localization ; so that it may be 
called into action in a regular and orderly way, according 
to the Principle of Home Rule, in large or small Govern- 
mental districts, according to the sphere in which its 
action is properly required, _ 207 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONCLUSION. — The special difficulties in the way of 
realizing the needed general social reformation, 
and their remedies; — these remedies being summed 
in the pursuit of the flrst principle of the semitic 
Philosophy, _______ 211-246 

86. The logical effect of a Revival of the Semitic Philosophy, 

will ultimate in a general Social Reformation, _ _ 211 

87. Three fundamental difficulties in the way, _ _ _ 212 

88. The first difficulty is the prevailing Monotheistic Idolatry, 213 

89. The second difficulty is the Abuse of the Productions of the 

Press, _________ 214 

90. The third difficulty is the undue respect paid to our ances- 

tors and predecessors, in handling their errors, _ _ 217 

91. Untenable Mediteval notions of the Hierarchy of the Roman 

Catholic Church, regarding religious instruction in the 
Public Schools, _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ 220 



X • CONTENTS. 

92. Obsolete ancient notions of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, 

respecting the Temporal Power and the Ecclesiastical 
Government of that Hierarchy, in opposition to the Civil 
Representative Democracy of the American People, _ 222 

93. 'The Industrial War now prevailing, and inaugurated by the 

erroneous measures and practices of former generations, 
can be settled by a general Industrial Peace, if those 
ancient errors are disregarded, _____ 229 

94. The measure granting Suffrage to the Negroes in the coun- 

try of the Whites, is as plain a violation of the Para- 
mount Interrace Law, — which assigns to each Race a 
separate country, — as was the forcible deportation of the 
Negroes from their native country in Central Africa; and 
the proper redress for both violations of that Law is to 
return the Negroes to their native country in Africa by 
the Whites; — by whom the wrong in both cases was com- 
mitted, _ 231 

95. One-sided views will be replaced by liberal culture and 

advancing Civilization of all the Races through the steady 
pursuit of the First Principle of the Semitic Philosophy, 243 



INTBODUCTION. 

T | ^HE Semitic Philosophy is the doctrine of the King- 
-*- dom of God, as it was first, under circumstances 
of very great difficulty, briefly proclaimed, and as it is 
capable of unlimited development. It is a system of 
principles, of first truths, based on patent facts of the 
universe, and couched in a brief formula. 

The fact that its author did not write it down in a 
book, suggests that he did not regard it as altogether 
beholden, for its preservation or for its development, to 
elaborate written forms of human language, or to any 
rigid verbal methods. The inference, indeed, is clear, 
that he relied, for the extension and propagation of his 
doctrine, on something entirely different from words. 

That there is, and always has been, another, though 
always much neglected, vehicle of thought, an internal 
instrument, altogether diverse from spoken or written 
words, is for every person that reflects a moment upon 
the process that, when he thinks, takes place within 
him, a most palpable truth. When he thinks of an 
object, or group of objects, not present, he sees within 
him something that represents it; and which, when 
the object is a physical one, that he has before 
observed, and when its representation is vivid, lie 



Xll INTRODUCTIOK. 

clearly perceives not to be either a word or a group of 
words, but an apparently distinct image of it, which, 
if he were not aware that the object was not present, 
he could not distinguish from the object itself. Now, 
the thing that vividly represents in thought an absent 
object, and that seems its image, may be called its 
sensuous idea. 

The nature of the sensuous ideas and their uses 
deserve attention. They can be proved to be material; 
to be organic parts of man's body, located, probably, 
in the brain; constructed like the rest of the body, by 
man's spirit; and marked with significant signs by 
forces rayed upon them, through the senses, from out- 
ward objects. It is they that immediately represent 
to man's spirit, outward objects, whether absent or 
present. Even words, oral or written, as outward ideas 
or representations of objects, are represented by the 
inward sensuous ideas, before they can be known. 

The thought carried on by means of sensuous ideas, 
without words, is instinctive. Sometimes, it is so 
rapid that its separate steps cannot be remembered, 
but only its result; and its process is virtually uncon- 
scious. At other times its steps are deliberate and per- 
fectly conscious. The advantage of instinctive thought, 
on account of its vividness and rapidity, over thought 
conducted by means of words, is manifested by its 
almost exclusive use in the common affairs of daily 
life. Its superiority is equally obvious in the con- 
structions of the highest science, by means of the 



INTEODUCTIOK. Xlll 

sensuous ideas resulting from careful observations and 
experiments. 

Without impugning the proper advantages of lan- 
guage for recording and communicating truth, the 
appropriate adaptation of instinctive thought for inves- 
tigating, exploring, methodizing, building up, and 
developing an embryonic system of social doctrine, as 
was that of the Kingdom of God when first pro- 
claimed, embracing by implication all liberal culture, 
and including philosophy, the special sciences, and the 
practical disciplines of religion, industry, charity and 
government, is unquestionable. 

Committed to the keeping of mere language, the 
doctrine of the Kingdom of God would have come 
down to us as a dogmatic, illiberal, contracted, dwarfed, 
and stunted abortion. But faithfully and generously 
confided, as the "comforter" of mankind, to the 
instinctive thought of the learned and the unlearned 
alike, it has been not only preserved, but cherished and 
developed, by the study of learned scholars, and by the 
tradition of the unlearned masses of the people; until 
it has grown from the tenets of a small and despised 
sect, to become the rule and the ideal, not only of 
modern civilization, but, also, of that more perfect 
universal, Interrace society which modern civilization, 
by proving the increasing capacity of the masses of 
the people for liberal culture, clearly foreshadows. 

Combinations of true sensuous ideas revealed in 
sudden glory, like constellations and galaxies of distant 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

stars, shining forth in the night, and skilfully sug- 
gested by Jesus, represented truths to the spirit of 
man which could not in his time be fully interpreted by 
the heathen words then current, and as then under- 
stood. For the languages known to the circle in 
which Jesus personally moved were imperfect and 
undeveloped; and in that circle little cultivation of 
those languages prevailed. It would have been neces- 
sary to invent a body of new technical terms, that is a 
new and extremely difficult language beyond the easy 
comprehension of the common people, to express at 
large and in an intelligible way the newly proclaimed 
truth of the Kingdom of God. 

Since that time new meaning has been infused into 
modern language, which has become reconstructed in 
new tongues and dialects, and has now in its various 
modifications, in Christian nations, become a better 
vehicle of Christian thought. 

But, if Jesus had attempted to write his doctrine 
in any of the imperfect languages of his day, it would 
have been necessarily liable to gross misinterpretation. 
By not writing his doctrine, he has referred its keep- 
ing to the sensuous ideas, where it always was, and 
where, in its original purity and truth, it always will 
be, found by earnest searchers with the instruments of 
deliberate instinctive thought. 

Many of the so-called religious dogmas of the day 
are linguistic formulations, couched in language that 
preserves its heathen implications, and which, therefore, 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

fails to fully express them in a Christian sense; al- 
though they were first suggested, perhaps, by deep, far 
away, indistinctly perceived truth. 

By treating in the light of instinctive thought, and 
by means of the sensuous ideas, what we have called 
the Semitic philosophy as the doctrine of the Kingdom 
of God, this philosophy can be carried back, before 
the origin of language, and, therefore, independently of 
it, to the primeval man, as well as carried forward to 
that ultimate consummation of perfect universal society, 
which is the ideal goal of all reform, and in which all 
merely human language must give place to other 
purely spiritual modes of intercourse. 

The lifegiving, energizing, and developing influence 
of instinctive, or free, thought upon the inward growth 
and the outward extension of the doctrine of the King- 
dom of God, can then be contrasted with the deadening 
obstruction fastened upon its vital functions by the 
cumbrous load of merely verbal, and arbitrary symbols, 
creeds, dogmas, canons, and decrees, that in some quar- 
ters have hindered, and in others have totally stopped 
its progress, and have turned it backwards towards the 
errors of ancient heathenism. 

No form of words can fully express, although it may 
indicate, a principle, far less a system or doctrine of 
principles. A principle can only be reached, by means 
of the sensuous ideas, in free or instinctive thought. 
Words, like a boat, may conduct us to the continent 
of truth; but, if we would explore the continent, we 



XVI I^TEODUCTION. 

must leave the boat behind us, and follow whither our 
inward guides, the faithful, unerring sensuous ideas, 
lead. We only go back to our boat when we wish to 
report our discoveries to those we left behind. 

P. 0. F. 
Baltimore, January 4, 1890. 



CHAPTEE I. 

rpiHE Semitic Philosophy, so called from the race of the 
-■- author of its great revival, is the Christian doctrine 
of the Kingdom of God. It was man's first thought, as 
an isolated person, before the invention of language, and 
being conducted by means of the sensuous ideas before 
its revival, it was the instinctive and normal original 
philosophy. 

1. To avoid any misconception from the name of 
the Semitic Philosophy, and from its relation to the doc- 
trine of the Kingdom of G-od, it seems necessary to make 
two preliminary remarks. In the first place, it should be 
said that the Semitic Philosophy, like the doctrine of the 
Kingdom of God, with which, in its developed sense, it is 
virtually synonymous, does not propose to enounce the 
principles of the science of religion only, but of all the 
sciences, and especially of all social science; deriving all 
principles from its one universal First Principle. In the 
second place, it is proper to say, that the Semitic Philos- 
ophy, while based on instinctive, or free, thought, and 
departing from some of the verbiage of prevailing systems, 
and particularly eschewing the trammels of obsolete, 
ancient, and arbitrary verbal maxims, creeds and dogmas, 
does not, in putting forth its views with the perfect freedom 
that belongs to truth, "come to destroy the law;" but "to 



2 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

fulfil" in every jot and tittle the Higher Law of GocL; for 
with this law must all true philosophy agree. 

There are many interesting and important systems of 
philosophy. They all propose, in avoiding the details of 
the special sciences, while having a tacit reference to them 
all, to give general views and explanations respecting the 
nature of man, and both of the material universe, and of 
the society, in which he is placed. Those systems which 
recognize God and his true relations to man, include in 
this society, expressly or by implication, the superior and 
presiding spirit of the one God. 

These systems have been composed at different and 
widely separated periods; some being very ancient, and 
others quite modern. All have much in common; but 
while each gives a condensed epitome of the highest cul- 
ture of the times in which its author wrote, or verbally 
expounded his doctrine, they are said, upon the whole, 
in combining ancient wisdom with modern improvements, 
to exhibit a decided progress. 

A new system of philosophy, therefore, cannot now be 
made entirely new, without culpably disregarding the 
merits of the old. But, if it eliminates from the sys- 
tems that have preceded it some important error, or 
adds to these systems some hitherto neglected weighty 
truths, it may in these respects, without presumptuously 
contending for the glory of a brilliant creation of genius, 
make a modest claim to attention on the ground of nov- 
elty. It is also possible, as will now be attempted, by 
disregarding the verbiage of prevailing systems, to ascend, 
by instinctive thought, to the simple philosophy of pri- 
meval man. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 3 

Philosophy has been called the science of sciences, the 
science of knowledge, the science of being, the science of 
principles, the science of the universal, the study of the 
cosmos; and, in fact, it is all of these. For it is an inte- 
gral discipline, and each of its functions involves in its 
exercise all the rest; while each of these definitions merely 
brings one of its functions into prominence. 

Viewed as a seeking after the universal, it begins in 
childhood; for the child is ever making wider and wider 
classes of the things surrounding it, and higher and 
higher generalizations; investigating with curiosity the 
part of the universe within its reach, and seeking to com- 
prehend its significance, and to utilize it for realizing its 
practical schemes. 

Indeed, the system of the kindergarten, as a method 
of primary education, is profoundly philosophical in rec- 
ognizing and developing the surprising fund of thought 
without language, or the instinctive thought, exhibited 
by the young child before it has learned the language to 
express it; yet which is strictly carried on, as will be 
explained, by means of the sensuous ideas; and which, if 
expressed in learned language, would well deserve the 
name of philosophy. For the instinctive thought of the 
child is constantly reaching after the universal. 

A lower, but still a remarkable, degree of reasoning, 
without language, is shown by many wild and domestic 
animals, and by insects, which exhibit instinctive thought 
in traces of foresight, prudence, mechanical skill, and 
industrial combination, in their work. 

But not only in children and animals does instinctive 
thought take place in the absence of language. It is 



4: SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

a remarkable fact that the greater part of the reasoning 
performed by all grown men, learned and unlearned 
alike, perhaps ninety-nine hundredths of it, is carried on 
instinctively, without the nse of language. This fact, on 
reflection, is as evident as it is important; plainly dis- 
closing philosophy at work in a new and unexpected 
field. 

2. Indeed, it cannot be doubted, that a large por- 
tion of the instinctive thought, as well of the unlearned 
masses as of the learned few, is true philosophy, or gen- 
eral reasoning based upon the highest universal princi- 
ples. Many instances can be given in which a universal 
principle announced by some scholar from his study, or 
by some man of business to his associates, has been taken 
up by those that heard it, and spread over a nation, over 
a continent, and over the whole civilized world — with some 
help, indeed, of language and of the press, as well as 
with some opposition from them — but with a speed that 
no such help can explain. For although the spoken word 
and the press can circulate the statement or formula of a 
principle far and wide, with some of the reasoning calcu- 
lated to enforce its acceptance, experience proves that at 
first they will find only ' ' a paucity" of hearers and read- 
ers. A striking formula in which the principle is 
expressed may be remembered; but it is the afterthought, 
the instinctive free thought, of the people in silence, in 
solitude, or at their work, that collects from far and near 
and applies those arguments and motives from every source, 
that support the principle and make it a guiding and con- 
trolling popular force. 

For instance, a distinguished lawyer once asserted that 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 5 

there is "a higher law than the Constitution." The 
expression, bearing on the questions and discussions that 
were agitating the people, attracted attention, and 
seemed almost immediately to command conviction and 
the support of millions. But before the principle in- 
volved could be rationally accepted, there was required 
a comparatively long train of reasoning — of reasoning 
opposed to the hereditary sentiments and maxims of 
the people, coming down from past generations, and 
urged by trusted and patriotic men of gigantic intellect — 
as Daniel Webster, who had gained immortal glory by 
defending the Constitution against another line of attack. 
The reasoning of the people in their afterthought on this 
subject was necessarily, in most cases, instinctive. 

The principle claimed to be the higher law, was the 
right of personal liberty, which was instinctively or intu- 
itively seen to be a law of nature, and as such to be a 
law of God, and was therefore concluded to be para- 
mount over the Constitution, which is positive law, and 
as such is made by man — a conclusion intuitively and 
instinctively reached in opposition to the tons of legal 
reports and legal text-books yearly scattered over the 
country, to the great mass of the current literature, and 
probably to the majority of sermons at that time preached. 
The instinctive nature of the reasoning which impelled 
the movement of the people in favor of the higher law, 
will be most clearly apprehended, as well as its force, 
from the rapidity and universality of its action. 

If this movement is traced from its defensive position 
in the comparatively small body of its early adherents, 
the Abolition party, when they united with their fellow 



6 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

citizens, who had then no sympathy with this movement, 
in the Northern, the Western and the Border states, to 
resist the actual revolution and civil war that chiefly 
aimed to dissolve the union of the United States and to 
seize a part of its territory, it will be evident that, in the 
midst of this revolution and civil war, a sudden counter 
revolution against slavery, and in favor of the higher 
law, and inaugurated by the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion, swept over the whole country. 

This counter revolution changed the issues of the 
war. The General Government reluctantly adopted the 
views of the Abolitionists as a war measure. For it was 
evident, that if slavery could be abolished, there would 
be no longer any motive for dissolving the Union, or for 
dividing the common country of the States. Both sides 
acknowledged that the new issue of the abolition of 
slavery, in accordance with the higher law, took prece- 
dence over the first issues of the war, and must be set- 
tled first. 

Battles were fought after the new issue was made up; 
but the decisive battle, the real tug of war, was on the 
field of reason. The instinctive thought of the people 
was set to work, and through its electric action the dark 
cloud of slavery disappeared from the political horizon, 
and left "not a rack behind." 

The force of the instinctive thought of the people 
was demonstrated by the fact that the whole people, the 
masses as well as the highly educated classes, in the 
South and in the North, came at once to the same con- 
clusion, and acquiesced in it without reserve; namely, 
that slavery, notwithstanding all the positive laws and 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 7 

judicial decisions made in favor of it, was illegal as well 
as immoral, being a violation of the paramount higher 
law; and that, as it could not be justified, it could not 
be defended. 

If it be said that the rapid spread and the ultimate 
success of the principle of the higher law was due to 
military force, and to the victory of the supporters of 
that doctrine on the field of battle, the answer is that 
force, although it may put down outward opposition and 
compel outward conformity, cannot produce conviction. 
The practice of slavery was doubtless, in a great meas- 
ure, suppressed by military force; but the sincere aban- 
donment of the doctrine of slavery, and the adoption of 
the higher law, could not be effected by force, and 
must have been caused by reasoning; and that reasoning, 
spreading in so short a time its legitimate logical conclu- 
sion from a few Abolitionists to the general body of the 
people, must have been instinctive. 

3. Similarly, there have been other revolutions, — 
the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the 
English Revolution; and before these, the religions revo- 
lutions called the conversions of the Saxons, Prussians, 
Russians and some other European nations to Chris- 
tianity, and the revolutionary spread of Mohamme- 
danism, in all of which movements force was used to 
overthrow and suppress ancient practices; — while the 
ultimate, peaceful and virtually unanimous conformity 
of the masses of the people to the new doctrines can only 
be explained as the result of instinctive reasoning. So in 
the Middle Ages, by the same reasoning, and not by 
learned discussions and treatises, was established in the 



8 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 



masses the principle of the separate organization of 
industry, leading to the erection of free cities and to the 
limitation of the monarchical governments of Europe, by 
means of organized trade guilds. 

But instinctive thought is interesting, not only for 
what it has accomplished in the past, but also for what 
it is able and will be called on, to do in the future. 
There are impending movements, peaceful revolutions, 
practical social reforms, — both in primary and in liberal 
public education, in the general Church, in the organi- 
zation of industry, in the system of public charity, and 
in the simplification and organization of the various 
branches of government, — which must be first fully 
thought out, and then worked out, by the masses of the 
people; and which are so vast in their scope, and so 
multitudinous in their details, that they can only be 
fully thought out instinctively. 

Formal dogmatic methods would be far too narrow, 
and far too slow. But, when the fundamental principle 
of each needed social reform is once clearly stated, — 
then, with whatever aid the common fund of language 
can afford for consultation and comparison of views, and 
with occasional light from some learned thinker, — the 
masses of the people will be responsible for carrying the 
principle out to its full practical realization in a general 
advance of modern civilization, under the guidance of 
instinctive reasoning. 

4. It is highly important, therefore, to examine the 
nature of instinctive thought, and for this purpose to 
consider the means it employs. These may be called the 
sensuous ideas. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 9 

They enable man, without language, to discover the 
first of all principles, and under its guidance to carry on 
instinctively the most important and complicated train 
of reasoning. Their examination will lead us up to that 
first principle, from which all the derivative principles 
of speculative and of practical action can be deduced; 
and which is the basis of that first covenant of God with 
man, which is the original and continuing social con- 
tract, the fundamental unwritten constitution of soci- 
ety: — the principle, therefore, that must underlie all 
philosophy. 

That which will appear to be most novel in the system 
of philosophy now proposed, will be that it pays more 
attention than other systems to the instinctive action of 
man, both practical and in thought. 

5. There is, in fact, but one philosophy. It is a 
perfect, unwritten, instinctive, predominantly specula- 
tive ideal. It is the Knowledge of God, — involving all 
truth and goodness, and written, as the prophet says, 
on man's heart. It rests on the first implied covenant 
of God with man, the promised uniformity of the uni- 
formities of God's action, or of the laws of nature; — 
that uniformity which is the highest law of the king- 
dom of God, and is the basis of Christianity, of modern 
civilization; — the first principle of all science and of all 
practice. 

Many systems of philosophy, and, to represent their 
peculiar doctrines, respectively, many so-called funda- 
mental questions, have been proposed. But all the fund- 
amental questions of true philosophy form one univer- 
sal, integral, or organic question. The universal and at 



10 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

the same time integral or organic question of all philos- 
ophy is: How is man related to the Kingdom of God, 
as the rational system of the universe? It involves the 
problem of rationally conducting man's normal, specu- 
lative and practical life, whether instinctive or fully con- 
scious, under the conditions presented by the actual 
universe. 

The formula, Kingdom of God, implies, and it has 
always been regarded as implying a philosophy, which 
may be expanded into a compact, consistent statement of 
the highest principles or laws of the spiritual and mate- 
rial universe, as its fundamental regulative constitution; 
this being the sum of the laws of nature or of God; all 
of which may be grasped into the one first principle as 
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action. 
Hence, this formula necessarily implies, on the one hand, 
a rational, organic, or integral system of thought; which 
explains, on the other hand, the universe as a rational 
organism of being, including society as an organic asso- 
ciation, under the social contract of all men with God. 

The philosophy of the formula, Kingdom of God, 
may be called the Semitic Christian philosophy, in dis- 
tinction from the ancient philosophies of Greece and 
Eome and of the Orient, and from the modern out- 
growths of those antiquated roots. It is instinctive as 
well as implied, and is, therefore, unwritten, being 
thereby distinguished from all other systems of philos- 
ophy. All its principles were proclaimed in the one first 
principle implied in the formula, Kingdom of God; and 
were then preserved by popular tradition in the language 
of the common sense and public opinion of modern 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 11 

civilization; and were also constantly confirmed, inde- 
pendently of language, by the mechanism of unspoken 
instinctive thought, used, as will be explained, by the 
learned and the unlearned alike. 

It must, as all philosophy, be a theory both of knowl- 
edge and of practice, as well as an inquiry into the 
nature of things. We must enter upon philosophy by 
the way of thought, and then through thjught we shall 
learn something of being. 

Thought and being are intimately connected as cause 
and effect; and hence they cannot be identical. We 
know being as the predominant cause of our thought, 
and our thought as the predominant effect of being on 
our spirit. 

We begin to philosophize by investigating the process 
of conscious thought, because the process of instinctive 
thought is in general partly unconscious; and it cannot, 
therefore, be fully inspected at the very time when it 
takes place; but, like all unconscious action, it can be 
proved afterwards by circumstantial evidence. 

In the first place, man's conscious thought performed 
without language, will be examined in man, both as an 
isolated individual, and in primitive or natural society, 
as the associate of God and of his fellow-men, whom 
that thought makes known to him. Afterwards, the use 
of language, and the danger of its abuse, in his thought, 
will be shown. 

In fact, before language there was thought. For lan- 
guage is proved, by the vast variety of the languages 
always found in the world, to be the invention of man ; 
and thought was evidently necessary to suggest, guide, 



12 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

and develop man's action in the formation of language. 
The greater part of the thought that prevailed before 
language, was necessarily instinctive ; and it is the un- 
questionable fact, that instinctive thought, owing to its 
superior speed and certainty, has remained, after the 
invention of language, the larger portion of the thought 
which both the learned and the unlearned now carry on. 
It will be seen, on investigation, that the same means or 
instruments that are employed in instinctive thought, are 
also used in all the conscious thought performed without 
language. 

Thought, with its connected practical action, will be 
examined (I.) in the isolated individual without language; 
(II.) in man connected with other living beings, plant or 
animal, human or divine, without language, in natural 
society; and (III.) in artificial society, with language. 

6. I. The investigation of conscious thought in 
the assumed isolated individual without language, who 
may represent the primeval man, may be considered as 
beginning either at the first dawn of consciousness in the 
life of infancy, or on the awaking of the individual in 
mature life from sleep. The first steps of the investiga- 
tion, in both cases, must be virtually the same ; the only 
difference being that in infancy they succeed each other 
much more slowly. 

7. In both cases consciousness is preceded by a 
state of unconsciousness more or less complete ; and this 
state of unconsciousness is proved, in both cases, by cir- 
cumstantial evidence, that will be mentioned hereafter, 
to have been one of extremely varied, perfectly accurate, 
practical instinctive action. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 13 

The awaking of consciousness from unconsciousness, is 
the concrete beginning of a section of subsequent con- 
crete conscious life ; and every such beginning necessarily 
involves every other beginning that has preceded it, and 
consequently also its absolute beginning, to the concep- 
tion of which it is the nearest approach that can be made. 
For it is self-evident that we cannot conceive either the 
absolute beginning or the absolute ending of anything. 

But every concrete beginning is also a concrete ending 
of what went before; and so a concrete ending is a con- 
crete beginning of something following, not altogether 
new. Thus there is an alternation, indefinitely repeated, 
of man's conscious with his unconscious life, producing a 
probable immortality, that may be compared to the con- 
servation of energy, in its alternating forms, in the 
outward world. Solomon said, "There is nothing new 
under the sun" — in the sense of absolutely new; — as every 
effect must have been involved in its cause. We may 
extend his remark, if he did not, to regions beyond the 
earth. For the concrete endings of conscious life on earth 
must, as causes, result in effects as concrete beginnings, 
if not on the earth, then in the same universe beyond it. 

Commencing, now, our investigation at the beginning 
of man's concrete consciousness, and passing by minor 
details that belong to psychology, the first step of philo- 
sophy is the conservative analysis of awaking conscious- 
ness, displaying for our observation its separate parts, 
while preserving their normal relations and their organic 
connections. 

The difference between a conservative and a destructive 
analysis of an animal organization, is like that between 



14 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

vivisection and butchering. Similarly, in all integral or 
organic wholes, or things composed of integral or ideal 
parts, each part pervading the whole and the whole each 
part; as in spiritual organisms, or in the action of spirit, 
or of the reason, or of the mind ; — while a conservative 
analysis preserves, in the interaction and articulation of 
the integral or ideal parts, the integrity and the common 
life of the whole, a destructive analysis deprives them all 
of healthy life, by attempting to sever the integral or ideal 
parts from their natural articulations with each other, 
as if they were independent and irrespective organs or 
faculties, and by thus taking away the aid which each, in 
performing its appropriate action, derives from the others. 

It is a common, if not a universal error, to apply a 
destructive analysis to the action of man's spirit, or of 
the mind. Its reason, understanding, sense, judgment, 
imagination, memory, will, are cut off and disconnected 
from each other; and these dissevered members are made 
to go through spasmodic actions, like the galvanized 
limbs carved off from the body of a dead animal. But, 
as no complete life, either of any spiritual or of any ani- 
mal organism, can take place without the perfect union 
and co-operation of all its organic parts, a conservative 
analysis of it, instead of sundering, will carefully preserve 
intact, and exhibit in full view, all the connections of its 
parts and their means of reciprocal interaction. 

The first operation made by such a conservative 
analysis upon man's awaking consciousness, is to distin- 
guish from each other its two main elements, the active 
subject, or the self, or the spirit of man, and the present 
inert object of the subject's action. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 15 

Continuing the conservative analysis of consciousness, 
and omitting for the present unnecessary psychological 
details, we will find that this analysis must pursue a dif- 
ferent course in regard to each of the two elements into 
which consciousness is divided. 

The first of these elements, the subject, or man's 
spirit, is an indivisible spiritual unit, the distinguishing 
attribute of which is its life, or action; and it is to its 
action, as an integral whole, with integral parts, that the 
analysis must be applied. 

The other element of consciousness is man's body, an 
organic material instrument, the distinguishing attribute 
of which is its passivity and its inertness; so that its con- 
servative analysis must distinguish the adaptation of its 
several articulated organic parts to subserve the various 
modes of the spirit's action. 

The body is called material or matter to distinguish it 
from the spirit; because in their qualities, as has been 
well observed, they are altogether different from each 
other, and have no attribute in common. The term 
spirit will be used instead of the terms subject, mind, or 
soul, or interchangeably with them, when any one of them 
is employed to express an indivisible spiritual unit, in 
direct contrast to a material body. 

The analysis of the body will be naturally preceded by 
that of the spirit's action, to which the body as its instru- 
ment is subservient. For the first conscious relation of 
the spirit to the body, as manifested in conscious action, 
is that of the agent to its instrument. Another relation 
between them, originating in the spirit's unconscious life 
preceding consciousness, will be mentioned hereafter. 



16 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

8. In the conservative analysis of the action of 
man's spirit,, to which we now proceed, the first division 
of this action is into its two fundamental elements of 
speculative or cognitive, and practical action ; then each 
of these may be immediate or mediate; or, again, un- 
conscious or conscious; or, further, real or imaginative. 
As the action or life of man's spirit is an integral whole, 
the parts resulting from its conservative analysis must 
likewise be integral — each pervading the whole, and 
each interpenetrated by the rest. Every cognitive or 
speculative act of the spirit, whether immediate or 
mediate, unconscious or conscious, real or imaginative, — 
is aided by some or all of its modes of practical action; 
and every practical act of the spirit is guided by one or 
more of its speculative modes. 

But, while all the elements of the spirit's action, and 
all their subordinate modes must co-operate in every act, 
one of its fundamental elements, in one of its various 
modes, must in every act predominate. Predominately 
speculative action, therefore, though called simply specu- 
lative, is partly practical; and predominately practical 
action is always partly speculative. 

The qualities of normal and abnormal, or of good 
and evil, do not belong to the action of the isolated indi- 
vidual; and they will only come to be noticed when 
man is considered in society. 

Owing to the integral nature of the spirit's action, the 
unconscious mode of its action must sometimes, to some 
extent, be simultaneous with, and sometimes almost 
entirely pass into, its conscious mode. Hence, the term 
instinctive action will be sometimes used in place of the 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 17 

term unconscious action, — it being understood that the 
instinctive action of the spirit is predominately uncon- 
scious, although it often tends to become, and at times 
partly, and at other times altogether, does become, 
conscious. 

The instinctive action of the spirit, whether specula- 
tive or practical, is not observed at the time it takes place, 
because it is for the most part unconscious; but, when 
it is practical, it is afterwards proved, by competent 
conscious circumstantial evidence, to have occurred; and 
when it is speculative, its results indicate the reasoning 
that led to them. The circumstantial evidence to prove 
foregone practical instinctive action, is the effects or 
changes, of which it must have been the cause. 

The first conscious speculative action of the spirit, 
after distinguishing the subject from the object, is its 
intuition of the facts constituting, as effects, the cir- 
cumstantial evidence of its preceding unconscious or 
instinctive practical action. These effects are its body. 

9. Man's body is notoriously composed of the mate- 
rial elements surrounding it, and which he consciously, 
by eating and drinking, and unconsciously, by breathing, 
places within it, and thereby in immediate relation to his 
spirit. When he moves his body, which he knows to be 
an object, and different in every respect from his spirit, 
and therefore to be matter, he is conscious that its motion 
is caused by the immediate practical action of his spirit; 
and, as soon as he learns that there are other spirits 
besides himself, he infers, by analogy, that every original 
motion of matter is caused by the immediate practical 
action of some spirit. Hence, as by every conscious or 



18 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

instinctive movement of his body man demonstrates that 
within it his spirit, by its instinctive, immediate, practical 
action, can move, and therefore use, matter, he infers that 
his spirit, which he thus knows to be a sufficient and 
present agent, does in fact use the matter within his body 
for building it up and repairing it. 

If it can be shown that the sensuous ideas within man, 
representing outward things to man's spirit, are material, 
and are organic parts of man's body, it will also follow 
that they, too, are made by the spirit's instinctive, imme- 
diate, practical action. 

It may be observed, in passing, that the ideas here 
mentioned, and afterwards described, are virtually the 
same things understood, by the same term, by Plato, 
Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Descartes, and 
others; all of whom, while differing from each other as 
to the nature and proper use of the ideas, saw them as 
plainly and used them as habitually, as they saw and used 
the sun. But no philosopher seems to have been always 
consistent in his views concerning them. Plato was per- 
haps the most inconsistent. For, besides giving his 
well known fanciful and utterly absurd philosophical 
explanation of the ideas — an explanation confuted at the 
time by Aristotle — he has left for universal admiration a 
poetic figure, which foreshadows, although it only dimly 
foreshadows, the true representative nature of the sen- 
suous ideas. He describes a cave, and a man within it, 
facing its back, and watching the shadows flitting there 
and cast through its mouth, which is behind him, by 
passing persons and things of the outward world. But 
we shall see that the sensuous ideas are more than flitting 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 19 

shadows; that a pencil of light from without photographs 
upon them in the brain the shifting scenes, and writes 
upon the heart the universal laws, of the outward uni- 
verse; and that man's spirit within his body, like Plato's 
watcher in his cave, looks not outward for knowledge of 
the outer world, but scans its faithful messages imprinted 
on living tablets within him. 

That the representative sensuous ideas are material, 
is a self-evident fact. For they are objects, intuitively 
seen, and known, by the spirit's immediate speculative 
action, to possess the primary qualities of matter, espe- 
cially magnitude; and also color, motion, and relative 
place. That they are organic parts of the body, follows 
from the facts that they are within the body, and are, so 
far as is known, inseparable from it, at least for definite 
periods of time, and certainly contribute, with the rest of 
the body, to give the spirit, in all its speculative and 
practical functions, most important aid. Hence, as 
parts of the body, they must be made, with the rest of 
it, by the spirit's immediate practical action. 

The conservative analysis of man's body, the creature, 
as we have seen, as well as the instrument, of his spirit, 
will exhibit it as an organism, or a collective instrument 
composed of many co-operating parts or organs, and per- 
fectly adapted to serve and facilitate both the speculative 
and the practical action, unconscious as well as conscious, 
of man's spirit. 

For the explanation of all the modes of the spirit's 
action, a specification of all the organs or integral parts 
of its collective instrument, the body, would be neces- 
sary. But all those organs, chiefly internal, that minister 



20 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

to the part of life that is common to man and the 
lower animals, may be left to physiology. For we are 
only concerned now with man's higher life as a rational 
being, and with those of his bodily organs that directly 
serve it. Of these bodily organs it is only necessary to 
mention here the outward bodily frame and its outward 
members, with the five outward senses, and the inward 
appendages of the latter, the brain and sensuous ideas. 
10. Among these bodily organs it is only the sensuous 
ideas that call for any extended remarks. The outward 
frame of the body, its outward members, and its outward 
senses, are sufficiently known to contribute both to the 
speculative and the practical action of the spirit; and the 
brain has been proved by specialists to be connected, 
through the nerves, with the outward senses; and to be 
the seat of important action communicated through 
them from the outward world. The particulars concern- 
ing the uses of these parts of the body need not detain us. 

The sensuous ideas having been shown to be inti- 
mately connected with the spirit's unconscious, or, as we 
shall now call it, instinctive action, as effects which that 
action practically causes, they will now be exhibited as 
the means which it speculatively employs. The use of 
the sensuous ideas to represent outward things, will be 
explained, somewhat at large, to be independent of 
language. 

11. Besides the representative sensuous ideas described 
above, and easily proved, like them, to be material, by 
exhibiting the primary qualities of matter, the spirit, 
by its combined speculative and practical action, frames 
and introduces among them what are known as the 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 21 

imaginative or fictitious ideas; evidently composed of the 
same kind of highly plastic matter as the representative 
ideas, but marked and modeled by the spirit, to serve 
either as mementos of some broad generalizations or 
lofty abstractions; or as ideals, schemes, plans, and pro- 
jects for future realization and execution. 

The imaginative or fictitious ideas obviously answer, 
as is well known, a very valuable end both in science and 
in the fine and useful arts, so that little more need be 
now said concerning them. It is evident that they do 
not make their appearance in consciousness until long 
after the representative sensuous ideas. 

In the conservative analysis of awaking consciousness, 
to which we now return, we have advanced to the consid- 
eration of the representative and the imaginative sensu- 
ous ideas, viewed as organic parts of the body, and as 
constructed by the spirit's instinctive, immediate, prac- 
tical action. Being within the body, and therefore in 
the immediate presence of the spirit, its immediate spec- 
ulative action, or intuition, is exerted upon them. This, 
according to its rapidity, is either instinctive and partly 
unconscious, or fully and deliberately conscious. In- 
stinctive speculative action, as we shall presently see, is 
so very rapid that but few of its steps can be remem- 
bered. Its results are conscious and are highly import- 
ant; but the instinctive process, by which they are 
reached, can only be apprehended and described in 
general, and without detailing its separate stages. 
We are first concerned to know what the spirit, in its 
intuitive conscious thought, observes in the sensuous 
ideas; and what use, in its several modes of speculative 



22 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

and practical action, it makes of them, without lan- 
guage, and as an isolated individual. 

12. It seems proper, however, before describing what 
the spirit of man observes in the sensuous ideas, and 
before stating, in general, the use that it makes of them, 
without language, in its speculative and practical action, 
as an isolated individual, to enumerate the various mod- 
ifications, of speculative and practical action; and to 
observe that in all these modifications, except for the 
purpose of communicating thought, the use of the sensu- 
ous ideas without language will suffice. In this way, the 
true value of language will be noticed and enhanced, by 
recognizing that its proper sphere of usefulness is to 
communicate, record, disseminate, and preserve thought; 
thereby making the use of thought joint, and thus pro- 
moting associations for joint practical action; while all 
the processes of individual or original thought, and of 
individual practical action, can be carried on without 
language, by means of sensuous ideas alone. 

Now, while the spirit's speculative action, as a whole, 
is designated as mind, or intellect, or understanding, or 
speculative reason, the chief modifications of its indi- 
vidual, or original speculative action, are called sensa- 
tion, sense, intuition, presentation, representation, know- 
ing, thinking, judgment, comparison, classification, 
generalization, notion, concept, inference, . induction, 
deduction, imagination, memory, and speculative faith; 
and while the spirit's practical action, as a whole, is 
called the practical reason, the chief modifications of its 
original or individual practical action, are named will, 
desire, intention, purpose, planning, scheming, expec- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 23 

tation, hope, passion, anger, and practical faith. It 
must always, however, be borne in mind, that, owing 
to the integral nature of the spirit's action, every exer- 
cise of its speculative mode of action is combined with 
some mode of its practical action, and every exercise of 
its practical action, with some mode of its speculative 
action. But, in presenting a general view of the spirit's 
speculative and practical action, as an integral whole, it 
is not necessary to enter upon a strict discrimination of 
the multitude of terms used to express its parts. 

13. It should also be observed here, that feeling, or 
emotion, although a highly important incident of action, 
is not a distinct and independent mode of action, between 
the speculative and the practical modes; but is a mark or 
attribute, pleasurable or painful, belonging to various 
modes of practical and speculative action, serving as an 
instinctive sesthetic guide for their exercise, though 
always subordinate to the reason, and to faith. For 
although instinct is undeveloped reason, it shows its 
inferiority when it conflicts with reason, which is fully 
developed instinct, and still more when it conflicts with 
faith, which is fully developed reason. The main cause 
of the importance of feeling, — as we shall see when we 
pass from the action of the isolated individual to the 
action of society, — is the fact that the same feeling, in a 
modified degree, results from fictitious or imaginative 
action as from real action, and from fictitious or imagin- 
ative ideas, as from real representative sensuous ideas. 
For this fact is the basis of all the fine arts. 

14. We are now prepared to describe what the spirit 
observes in the representative sensuous ideas, and to 



24 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

explain what use, independent of language, it makes of 
them in thought. They are commonly called images of 
outward things, but this is a figurative expression. 
All that the spirit actually sees in the sensuous ideas, 
overlooking in respect to them as well as the other 
inward parts of the body the fact that they are matter, 
are certain marks, impressions, and signs inscribed upon 
each of them, and altogether, or nearly altogether, dif- 
ferent upon each. 

Only a brief experience is necessary to satisfy the 
spirit that the inscriptions it observes upon the sensu- 
ous ideas are significant. As a ship is built with a form 
adapted to traverse the uneven surface of the sea, to ride 
and breast its rolling waves, so man's body is con- 
structed with a form suited to travel over the rough 
surface of the land, and to navigate over it, amidst a 
throng of fixed and moving solid objects. Thus, the 
form of the body points to the existence of an outward 
world beyond it; and accordingly when the body success- 
ively approaches different outward objects, comes in con- 
tact with them, or departs from them, and when the 
spirit observes corresponding changes in the marks upon 
its sensuous ideas, it associates these changes with 
related facts in the outward world. Soon, certain marks 
upon these ideas are associated with the near presence of 
certain outward objects. Then, some of these outward 
objects are further identified, as those actually present, 
by the senses of touch, of smell, of taste, and of hearing, 
giving corroborating supplementary marks, when the 
primary or prominent marks proceed from the sense of 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 25 

sight; and by the sense of sight, when the primary or 
prominent marks proceed from the other senses. 

The marks upon the sensuous ideas may be explained 
as impressions made upon them by forces rayed or 
reflected upon them, in lines or undulations, through the 
several outward senses, from outward objects. Among 
such forces, are light, heat, electricity. 

The representative sensuous ideas, with their marks, 
may be further regarded not only as loosely indicating the 
presence of their respective outward objects, but also as 
exact differentials of them, or as indefinitely small aux- 
iliary magnitudes, precisely representing them all on the 
same scale; and thus giving to the process both of con- 
scious and of instinctive thought the certainty and com- 
bining power of mathematics. Indeed, the differential 
and integral calculus of the mathematics may be looked 
upon simply as an instance of success in imitating, by 
momentarily arresting, correctly observing, and carefully 
educing into consciousness, and then into verbal and sym- 
bolic expression, the fleeting and rapid but certain method 
of instinctive thought. 

But, while the differentials of mathematics are all pri- 
marily quantitative, the sensuous ideas are qualitative as 
well as quantitative differentials; and they are, therefore, 
far more efficient instruments of thought than the differ- 
entials of mathematics. 

The ground of certainty for all thought carried on by 
means of the sensuous ideas, is the fact that the ratio of 
every outward object, in virtually the same relative situa- 
tion, to its sensuous idea, must be the same; for otherwise 
the sensuous ideas would be delusive. It follows that the 



26 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

ratios of outward objects, in virtually the same relative 
situations, to each other, must be equal to the intuitively 
seen and known ratios of their respective sensuous ideas. 
An equation, therefore, between the ratio of two sensuous 
ideas, and the ratio of their corresponding outward 
objects — these being in the same relative situations — 
forms a proportion, any three terms of which being 
known involve and imply the knowledge of the fourth 
term. 

Man, knowing the sensuous ideas and also their ratios 
by intuition, and knowing near outward objects also by 
a confirmatory bodily sense of touch or taste, can com- 
pare a near outward object thus known, or an object by 
inference otherwise known, with an unknown object sim- 
ilarly circumstanced, by regarding their ratio as equal to 
the intuitively known ratio of their sensuous ideas; thus 
constituting an equation of two ratios, or a proportion, of 
which the three known terms render, by legitimate infer- 
ence, the before unknown fourth term likewise known. 

In this way, the knowledge of concrete object after 
object, of concrete group after group to which they 
belong, and of fact after fact, in the outward world, is 
added to the sum of experience; and the growing, intu- 
itively seen, synthesis of the sensuous ideas, gives assur- 
ance of a corresponding synthesis of the part of the out- 
ward world which they represent. 

Great differences of distance and perspective in out- 
ward objects, and apparent in their ideas, give the basis 
for a conscious mathematical calculation, in simple cases, 
to adjust the true outward relations of those objects, by 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 27 

comparison with other objects; and for an instinctive 
calculation in cases of great complication. 

When the perfection and rapidity of man's instinctive 
action, without the incumbrance of words and of tools, 
as evidenced by the construction of his body, by his 
immediate combined speculative and practical action, is 
considered, with the fact that the axioms on which the 
whole system of mathematics is built are few and self- 
evident; and with the further fact that even every dumb 
animal habitually puts these axioms in practice in its 
simplest acts of locomotion, when steering to avoid ob- 
jects in its way, or to reach distant objects by circuitous 
routes, or when measuring the distance it can spring on 
its prey; the resulting conclusion, to say the least, is prob- 
able, that the isolated individual man does in fact work 
out in practice by his instinctive action the very compli- 
cated and very difficult mathematical problems necessary 
both to triangulate his course in his daily walks, and to 
measure and compare the mathematical relations of the 
outward objects by which he is surrounded. 

Likewise, between sensuous ideas, viewed as qualitative 
differentials, there may, by analogy, be qualitative ratios, 
leading to qualitative proportions and conclusions. For 
example, by observing the ratios between the sensuous 
idea of a specimen orange, which I have in my hand, 
and have smelled, and tasted, and the idea of another 
object hanging on a tree, or held in my other hand; and 
by noticing whether this ratio is one of equality, simi- 
larity, or great difference, I can infer the same ratio 
between the orange in my hand and the other object; 
and, accordingly, that this other object is, or is not, 



28 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

another orange,, having or not having, the same, or 
similar, taste, fragrance, and juiciness. 

Cognition is an integral process of predominantly 
speculative action or thought. It involves intuition, 
comparison, judgment and inference, as its modes and 
factors, all acting successively, though seemingly at the 
same time, in one indivisible cognitive act; and it is aided 
in observation and experiment by practical action, when 
it needs it. For instance, the sensuous ideas are observed 
by intuition; their ratios are comparisons; the equations 
of ratios of the sensuous ideas with ratios of their out- 
ward objects, forming proportions, are judgments; and 
the conclusion to the fourth term of a proportion from 
the other three is inference. 

Cognition may embrace matters of fact, as spirit, life 
or action, matter, existence, coexistence, sequence, causa- 
tion, resemblance, difference; and also modes of being, 
or qualities. Cognition of the sensuous ideas is imme- 
diate; all other cognition is mediate, by means of them. 

To conceive an object is to note and group the main 
or characteristic qualities in its sensuous ideas, and con- 
sequently in the object itself. Its concept or notion is 
the sum of these qualities. A general concept or notion 
is the sum of the qualities common to a group of sensu- 
ous ideas, and therefore to the outward objects they rep- 
resent. A category is a universal concept comprising the 
quality or qualities common to one of the few largest 
groups into which all thinkable things have been divided. 
It is a conception of conceptions. 

The act of forming general conceptions effects the 
organization, or incorporation, or collection, of the sen- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 29 

suous ideas in groups by the spirit for the further pro- 
cesses of its thought. It musters and brings together as 
a whole those which are particularly or nearly related. 

These general conceptions, which are also notions, 
may be only used on a single occasion, or they may, if 
found convenient, be habitually reformed and used; and 
when they correspond to natural kinds or familiar classes, 
there is no difficulty in doing so. 

Categories, therefore, are not " forms of the under- 
standing," or particular modes, or predetermined results 
of the spirit's action; but, like other concepts or notions, 
of which they are only the most general, they are groups 
of attributes or qualities variously combined in cognition 
by different philosophers; and they may evidently be 
formed by instinctive thought without language, as 
doubtless they are by many of the unlearned, to serve 
their daily needs of thinking. 

Cognition, with its notions, concepts, and categories, 
embracing objects and groups of objects, with their qual- 
ities, is then extended to the motions of objects; and is 
applied in all its forms to matters of fact, all of which 
have some reference, through time, to motion. 

When we come to consider the practical action that is 
involved in, and associated with cognition, or speculative 
action, we will then learn the true nature of qualities, 
and find that space and time rank first among them, and 
are not so-called " forms of sense." We will see, as we 
may now state, by way of anticipation, that all the puali- 
ties of matter are results of some spirit's action upon it; 
that all the so-called qualities of spirit, of its life, are 
modes of its action; that by its action all original motions 



30 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

of matter are caused, and that its actions are indicated 
by these motions. 

15. By means of the sensuous ideas, both in instinct- 
ive and in conscious thought, we know things as they 
are in themselves. For, in the first place, the diiferent 
sensuous ideas from the same sense, and from different 
senses, confirm each other in the knowledge they respect- 
ively convey; and this knowledge is further aided by the 
spirit's practical action, as by handling, weighing, and 
measuring their respective objects; or by analyzing these, 
or other specimen objects, into their elements. And 
then, in the next place, — for the same reason that the 
ratios of outward objects to their respective sensuous ideas 
must, under the same circumstances, be always the same; 
and that the sensuous ideas by their ratios, therefore, must 
convey true knowledge in respect to the ratios of the 
outward objects themselves, — the knowledge of outward 
objects, in other respects, imparted through the sensuous 
ideas to man's spirit must be true; that is, it must repre- 
sent the outward objects as they are in themselves. 
Otherwise, the forces rayed from outward objects upon the 
sensuous ideas, and marking them to guide in thought 
the action of man's spirit, through the bodily organiza- 
tion or mechanism by which it acts, would only serve as 
a system of delusion, inconsistent with the rational and 
benevolent order of the universe. 

Kant says all knowledge is the product of two factors, 
the knowing subject, and the external world. He omits 
the third, the true mediating factor, the sensuous ideas. 
These, in their concreteness and synthesis, furnish the 
unity of conception, and the general conceptions. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 31 

Phenomena, or perceptions, or presentations, are not 
an unconnected manifold in experience; because they are 
conveyed by the sensuous ideas, and the sensuous ideas 
represent adjacent parts of the universe until they are 
distinguished from each other by voluntary abstraction, 
and then each represents a concrete object, or a definite 
concrete part of an object, or a concrete group of objects; 
distinguished, but not separated from the general field, 
or continuum from which it is abstracted; and phenomena 
are not more manifold than their sensuous ideas. 

There are no antinomies in instinctive thought, or in 
the conscious thought that is exclusively guided by the 
sensuous ideas. For the intimations that come directly 
from the outward universe to man's sensuous ideas, serve, 
when carefully apprehended, only to guide, and not to 
mislead, his thought. When to an observer the sun 
appears to rise, although it is in fact the horizon that is 
sinking below it, the erroneous appearance is occasioned 
by the observer's omission to consider his own motion as 
that of the earth on which he is carried; just as a traveler 
in a railroad car, or in a boat, seems to see the trees, the 
houses, and the hills rushing towards him, until he re- 
members that it is he, with the car or the boat on which 
he is riding, that is rushing past them. 

The conscious beginning of knowledge, or the awaking 
of consciousness, as we have traced it to the time when 
the spirit, attracted and taught by the changing marks in 
its sensuous ideas, looks out beyond the body, must early 
have become self-consciousness, as a universal synthesis 
of cognition; combining in organic union the self and 
the not-self, a representative and symbolical notion of the 



32 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

universe, — a notion exceedingly complicated, and there- 
fore apparently nebulous and confused; but gradually 
resolved by the spirit's power of attention into a luminous, 
harmonious, and rational system; an integral or organic 
whole, of distinct but reciprocally interacting parts, or 
facts, constituting together the one universal synthetic 
fact of the universe. 

16. In this developed self-consciousness there is a 
universal conception, a universal concrete notion, of all 
the sensuous ideas as a whole, and of the universe repre- 
sented by them, so far as man knows it. This synthetic 
notion, or conception of the universe, is the objective 
continuum, or the presentative continuum, of the psycho- 
logist. It is a permanent background, as it were, for any 
particular idea, or group of ideas, to which attention is 
directed. It is a representation of the field or arena on 
which every action of man is to be performed. In it 
man can see all the relations of the things he has done, 
or is doing, or proposes to do. In it he can see all the 
present, and in the present, all the past as its cause, and 
all the future as its effect. In it also are found the parts 
of man's experience already in original, synthetic, close 
combination, which Kant strove to find, and only failed 
to see because he applied a destructive analysis instead 
of a conservative analysis, to man's original, universal, 
integral, synthetic notion of the universe. 

This synthetic notion, representing the one universal 
fact of a universe framed with all knowledge and truth, 
reflecting and imparting them to man's intelligent 
inquiry, may be divided by abstraction, analysis, classi- 
fication, and generalization of its sensuous ideas into 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 33 

many separate systems of sensuous ideas, corresponding to 
the partial facts which they represent, respectively, of 
concrete outward things; but it will always, by means 
of these ideas, collectively considered, be reflected again 
in its concrete form from its original, and return as a 
whole for the deliberate investigation of conscious and of 
instinctive thought. When recalled, it always represents 
and keeps in view the universe as a rational system, or 
the "kingdom of God." The conservative analysis of 
this synthetic notion, when aided by outward, practical 
action, is, both in action and result, scientific observation, 
experiment, — in a word, experience. 

17. The conservative analysis of the original synthetic 
notion of the universe alternates with the artificial syn- 
thesis, or construction of its parts in thought. Thus, 
after the synthetic notion of the universe is analyzed, the 
sensuous ideas composing it are separately reviewed, 
marshalled, classified, brought under genera and species 
by the integral action of the spirit; and by their arrange- 
ment in this way each class, when consciously or instinct- 
ively perceived and distinguished, is constituted an in- 
tuitive, conscious, or instinctive, conception or notion. 

This forming of conceptions by the arrangement of 
the sensuous ideas into classes, collective bodies, selected 
masses, may be regarded as the grouping of them for the 
convenience of simultaneous general views. This pro- 
ceeding may also be called Induction, when the group or 
class thus formed is assumed to contain all the individuals 
that possess the observed common characteristics of the 
class or group; — while Deduction is the process by which 
any individual recognized as belonging to any group is 



34 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

held to possess all the common characteristics of that 
group; and by which any group noticed as comprised 
within a larger group, is held to have all the common 
characteristics of the larger group. 

Thus, the one integral and universal synthetic notion, 
or microcosm, reflected from the one integral fact of the 
universe by means of the sensuous ideas, and representing 
as well as expressing all the real, both spiritual and mate- 
rial, constitutes the whole domain of philosophy. In the 
interpretation of this notion, by means of the first prin- 
ciple, all philosophy, and all the physical and all the 
philosophical sciences, metaphysics, logic, psychology, 
epistemology, ontolgy, cosmology, ethics, theology, will 
combine to rationally explain the ultimate nature of 
the universe; and will leave it better understood, in their 
joint result, as a rational system. 



CHAPTER II. 

"IV /TAN'S original philosophy, or first thought, even 
-L*-L after he came into conscious relations with other 
spirits, first without language in natural society, then 
with language in artificial society, was instinctive and 
normal; so, at first, were both natural and artificial 
society, until ancient artificial society, by the lapse of 
man's thought, through the abuse of language, into 
idolatry, and of his practical action, through idolatry 
into crime, became abnormal as the union of idolatry 
with crime, and was called ancient heathenism. 

18. So far we have considered the spirit of man as an 
isolated individual. We are now prepared to regard him 
as he stands in conscious relations with other spirits. We 
will see that, when he comes to have these conscious 
relations, he enters upon a higher and wider sphere of 
speculative and of practical action; and that his practical 
action affected by his conscious relations with other 
spirits greatly extends the scope of his speculative action; 
while this, in turn, advances his practical action in 
dignity and importance. 

Now, looking out from his isolated position, by means 
of his sensuous ideas, upon the outward world around 
him, and judging, from the motions caused in his body 
by the immediate action of his spirit, that all original 
motion is caused by the immediate action of some spirit, 

35 



36 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

he sees numerous material moving objects of many differ- 
ent forms; he observes that each of these objects of a 
certain form exhibits a somewhat similar series and sys- 
tem of motions; some of these objects being stationary 
and rooted in the soil, and displaying their motions in 
growing, leafing, flowering and fruiting; while others 
move about from place to place, some on the land, some 
in the water, and some in the air; each performing the 
peculiar system of motions belonging to its kind. And 
he concludes that each of these objects is moved, like his 
own body, by an individual spirit dwelling within it. 

Among these moving objects he notices some with 
forms like his own, performing similar motions, and these 
objects he infers to be inhabited by spirits like his own 
spirit, and to be his fellow-men, — his equals. The rest, 
with their various forms, vegetal and animal, and with 
their diversified systems of motions, he concludes to be 
inhabited by spirits inferior to himself. 

19. Then, grouping the sensuous ideas of all these 
moving objects, he forms a universal conception of them 
as the world endowed with spirit, or with life — as the 
living world; and, when he further observes that each 
of these objects is possessed of members or organs to 
facilitate its motions or actions, he views this universal 
conception as that of the orgauic world. 

Afterwards, furnished with the universal conception 
of the organic world, he groups the rest of his sensuous 
ideas, representing the rest of the outward material 
universe, into another universal conception, embracing 
them as signifying the inorganic world. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 37 

Each of these universal conceptions would be a collec- 
tive sensuous idea; and it could be used with facility in 
thought, by means of some smaller group, or single 
sensuous idea, either belonging to it as a remarkable 
feature, or framed by the imagination, for the purpose 
of representing it. Indeed, general ideas may be viewed 
as the solemn dolls and serious playthings of the mind, 
the happy work of the imagination, relieving the labor 
of thought; and, while differing probably from each 
individual, yet performing the same symbolic office for 
all of a class. 

20. Now, contemplating the inorganic world, by means 
of its conception, or collective idea, as a whole, man 
perceives in it, too, a general system of motions or laws, 
or principles, the so-called laws of nature; and, by the 
analogy of the other systems of motions which he has 
observed, he is constrained to assign as the cause of the 
laws of nature one superior spirit, and to regard them as 
uniformities of his action. 

Of this superior spirit, called God, man, by means of 
his sensuous ideas, has the same kind of knowledge that 
he has of his own spirit. Man knows his own spirit by 
his predominantly practical action or work, aided by his 
speculative action or work; both of which, constituting 
his actual life, he sees, by means of his sensuous ideas, to 
be realized together in the forms and motions of outward 
matter; and he concludes from these, as others may also 
do, what are the true character and attributes of his spirit. 
In the same way, man infers the being with certainty, and 
also, though liable to some deception, the probable attri- 
butes and the apparent character of the spirit of his 



38 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

fellow-man. In the same way also, when relying solely 
on the sensuous ideas, and not misled by the antinomies 
of language, and in a case where no deception can be 
presumed, — man proves, by a strictly logical demonstra- 
tion, the being or life, and the true character of the 
spirit of God, from the general system of the forms and 
motions, or laws, of the inorganic world; which must 
necessarily proceed from the action of spirit, and, owing 
to their uniformity and vastness, from a single superior 
spirit; and which must be necessarily designed to effect 
the very complicated system of useful, and benevolent, 
and ennobling ends for man's benefit and education, 
which they actually accomplish. 

Man infers the omnipresent action of the superior 
spirit in all parts of the material universe from the 
simultaneous presence and action of his own spirit in 
all parts of his body — performing thousands of bodily 
motions at the same moment. 

21. Before proceeding further in the investigation of 
man's speculative action, we will review, to some extent, 
his conscious as well as instinctive practical action from 
its concrete beginning in the outward world. Man's 
early individual practical life, after his birth into the 
outward world, is consciously as well as instinctively 
devoted, in the first place, to the nourishment, shelter, 
and defense of his body. In these operations he experi- 
ences sometimes aid, sometimes opposition, from the 
spirits or lives of plants, of animals, and of his fellow- 
men, all engaged in caring for their own bodies; while a 
bountiful supply of materials for their construction is 
provided for all from the inorganic world by God. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 39 

In fact, it is evident from the analogy of the action of 
man's spirit in constructing his body, that the spirits of 
plants and of animals, in regard to their bodies, do the 
same; and that the bodies of man, of animals, and of 
plants, are all built up by their respective spirits, out of 
materials furnished to them for this purpose from the 
elements of the inorganic world. These elements are 
manifestly prepared and fitted for this use, through the 
laws of nature by God, as that superior spirit who is seen 
to exhibit in the forms and motions of the inorganic 
world the benevolent character, as well as the power of 
his action; and who, by alloAving for this use unstinted 
stores of the inorganic matter which he controls, and 
works up for this application of them, displays in a 
marked and particular manner his unselfish and dis- 
interested goodness. 

There are certain fluid elements, as air and water, 
that can be directly taken from the common stores of 
inorganic nature, by all plants, men, and lower animals, 
by breathing and imbibing them, and are thus util- 
ized for their bodies; water forming the greater part 
of their bulk in men and animals, and carbon, a con- 
stituent of the air, composing a large proportion of the 
bodies of plants. These fluid elements are so abundant 
that no opposition is experienced, and consequently no 
effort or enterprise, in most cases, is required for appro- 
priating whatever portions of them any individual 
organism can use. 

But there are certain mineral elements, equally neces- 
sary for the construction of the bodies of plants, of man, 
and of the lower animals; but which only the plants can 



40 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

directly take into their bodies from inorganic nature. 
To obtain these mineral elements for the use of their 
bodies, herbivorous animals consume the bodies of plants; 
and carnivorous animals for the same purpose consume 
the bodies of the herbivorous. Man, with the same end 
in view, consumes the bodies both of plants and of 
animals. 

Plants always yielded up their bodies for man's use, 
without resistance, for clothing, for weapons, for boats, 
and for his domestic structures, as well as for his food. 
Animals, from the beginning, defended themselves against 
him. Some also assailed him openly, others secretly, by 
surprise and strategem, thus teaching him self-defense 
and the arts of offensive war; while others, as the ant, 
the bee, and the beaver, gave him lessons in co-opera- 
tion in the industrial arts, — lessons of great value in 
man's early history. 

22. Thus, the plant life and the animal life, by which 
man saw himself environed in the outward world, and the 
necessity experienced by him to defend his body against 
hostile attempts, and to seek for the support of his body 
those indispensable elements that are only to be found in 
a condition suited for this use in the bodies of plants and 
animals, — led to the exercise of practical labor and in- 
dustry, with skill, energy and foresight by the individual 
man, in order to accomplish those ends. Then, the 
further pursuit of the same ends led him to form con- 
tracts or agreements to realize them as common social 
ends by the association, community, or society of man 
with his fellow-man. Accordingly, in order to more 
effectually protect himself against carnivorous animals, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 41 

also to hunt and kill, or to capture, collect, and herd 
animals, and to cultivate plants, useful for food, he 
was early induced to form associations with his fellow- 
men beyond the family for mutual advantage in such 
designs. 

In this way, human society began to extend beyond 
the family; and with the extension of society there was 
produced a vast enlargement of man's speculative views, 
and of the scope of his practical action. But, before 
entering upon a discussion of his social relations with 
his fellow-men, it is proper to notice a circumstance 
growing out of his relations to plant life and animal 
life; and which affords a clue to the solution of some 
mooted questions concerning the elements of his knowl- 
edge. These questions can be rapidly disposed of. 

23. Man is distinguished from all other animals by 
the fact that he cooks his food. The importance of 
this fact is, that man by his practical action changes 
the natural qualities of the material objects he uses as 
food, and imparts to them new artificial qualities. Now, 
if man can superinduce qualities on matter, it follows 
that God can do so. And if no other cause is known, 
or can be found for the qualities of matter, it follows like- 
wise that their cause is the action of God. We are free, 
therefore, to think of matter as being originally pure, 
without any of what we know as its natural qualities, 
and to consider it as carefully prepared by God with 
qualities adapted to man's senses; cooked for him, if 
you please; or distilled and condensed in Nature's vast 
alembic, from floating nebulae. 



42 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Quality, therefore, is the adaptation of matter to the 
apprehension of man's senses, and a fitness of it for 
man's use. The adaptation and the fitness are not 
evolved, but are the deliberate results of God's action, 
which are seen in the laws of nature. 

24. Owing to the small size of the sensuous ideas, and 
the great number of them ever present which the spirit 
can conveniently contemplate at one time, it can use 
directly in forming its judgments and inferences its 
groups of these ideas, instead of the notions, concep- 
tions, and imaginative symbols it has constructed to 
represent these groups. In order to explain the sensuous 
ideas by contrasting them with language, something of 
the nature of language will be here anticipated, before 
we come to treat of the uses of language in society. 

Language, as we shall see, is a contrivance of man 
to externalize the sensuous ideas, their groups, symbols, 
notions, and conceptions, in plastic, oral, written, and 
mimic signs, for the purpose of communicating, record- 
ing and preserving his thought in society. But, even 
when most verbose, it is an extremely abbreviated, rude, 
and imperfect short-hand notation of the immense num- 
ber of the sensuous ideas, and the groups of them, 
actually used in original thinking. It vainly seeks, by 
its abbreviations and condensations, to overtake the 
marvelous rapidity of instinctive thought. Sometimes, 
therefore, its terms connote abstractions and complexes 
that instinctive thought, in the same connection, does 
not always need to employ; and sometimes they fail to 
connote important parts of the fact they are designed 
to denote. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 43 

25. Space, time and gravitation, are among the terms 
whose definitions, in language, present difficulty. Space 
is a compound quality of matter, its most general quality, 
belonging to every particle of it; and it consists of the 
three simple qualities of length, breadth, and height, the 
three so-called dimensions. Its universality, as appre- 
hended by spirit, implies the universality of matter, and 
of motion in the inorganic world, as all matter known 
is in motion; and it therefore also implies the universal 
presence of God's spirit, as the cause of all original 
motion of the inorganic world. Time is a compound 
quality of action, and therefore of motion, which is 
caused by action; and it consists of the simple qualities 
of present, past and future; rendering action a train, or 
series, as the co-existence and the sequence of sequences 
or changes. Every action, whether in thought or in 
the outward world, produces an effect, a change. The 
change produced on outward matter is motion. The 
change produced by the spirit's action in thought on the 
sensuous ideas, is their analysis and synthesis in trains, 
corresponding first to the sequences of events in the out- 
ward world, passing or present; then to their causes or 
antecedents in the past; these trains being supplemented 
by links of imaginative ideas, projecting the effects or 
sequels of the present into the future, and the whole 
thus produced being qualified as a continuous time line 
of action, or chain of causes and effects, reaching from 
the remotest known past, through the present, to the 
most distant future. The time line of action is meas- 
ured from a known era by known units of motion, in- 
volving and representing assumed units of time, — the 



44 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

yearly orbit of the earth, the monthly orbit of the moon, 
and the daily revolution of the earth, — the latter multi- 
plied into weeks, and divided into hours, minutes and 
seconds. 

Gravitation is the continuing, original, calculated com- 
bination of forces, constituting the action of the spirit 
that impelled condensed matter into our system of the 
universe, and resulting in the known compounded mo- 
tions of this matter towards the several centers of that 
system. 

Space, time, and gravitation may be considered, in- 
stinctively, without language, in the vast system of the 
sensuous ideas, in a general view that will give support to 
the tendency of modern physical science to represent 
"all physical phenomena as modifications of motion." 

26. In the absurd conflict that has hitherto been car- 
ried on between science and religion, based in a great 
measure on the antinomies and paralogisms due to the 
abuse and inefficiency of language, and especially to the 
term infinite, which has no single or collective represen- 
tative in the sensuous ideas — it has been forgotten that 
although ignorance still places limits on the advance of 
science as well as of religion, science, while decrying 
the alleged ignorant mysteries of religion, has invented 
for itself, as its boasted prerogative, mysteries still more 
incredible. 

For, although the defective terms of language, when 
relied on as instruments of thought, convey only imper- 
fect knowledge of Nature and of God, the seusuous 
ideas, being far more perfect instruments of original 
thinking, impart to the spirit in instinctive thought, for 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 45 

the reasons already given, correct knowledge of outward 
material things as they are, and through them, for the 
same reasons, the true knowledge of God. The mys- 
teries, therefore, that false science, whether idealism or 
agnosticism, has contrived hy denying the reality of the 
noumenon or thing in itself, or by admitting its reality 
and denying all knowledge of it, and by asserting the 
inscrutable nature of the power, called God, which it con- 
fesses to stand, although unrevealed, behind the opera- 
tions of nature — are as weak and superstitious as any 
mystery of religion. Nor do the idealists and agnosti- 
cists fail to admit, accordingly, that their mysteries, or 
dogmas, are instinctively rejected by all mankind. The 
mystery of materialism, or a world without spirit, is 
virtually identical with the mystery of idealism, or 
a world without matter; matter and spirit being used 
interchangeably in these scientific mysteries. 

If it should be objected to the reality of the sensuous 
ideas that, although they are plainly visible to the spirit, 
they are not laid open by the dissecting knife, the answer 
is, that their matter may be as impalpable as the material 
ether which is supposed to pervade the universe, and still 
to be matter. 

27. It only remains now to show, before considering 
man in general society, that in the primitive family he 
was capable of acquiring without language, by means of 
his sensuous ideas, the rudiments of that faith which, 
when developed in society by true education, is the 
highest liberal culture. 

Faith means the action of man's spirit when energized 
by divine influence. As the action of man's spirit is both 



46 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

sjoeculative and practical, there is a speculative faith and 
a practical faith. The method of procuring divine in- 
fluence upon man's spirit is by his study and application 
of principles, which are the rules or uniformities fol- 
lowed by God's action in the laws of nature. They are 
speculative and practical. 

By the study and application of speculative principles, 
as those of scientific truth, man is exercised, educated, 
and disciplined in the manner of God's speculative action, 
or thought; and his spirit by this communion with God 
is intellectually energized; as it is even by frequent inter- 
course with a fellow-man of superior intelligence; and it 
thus acquires speculative faith. Similarly, by the study 
and application of practical principles, as those of love 
and justice, even in the primitive family, man is exer- 
cised, educated and disciplined in the modes of God's 
practical action, and his spirit is thereby practically 
energized; and it thus acquires practical faith. 

When man entered into society, therefore, before his 
invention of language, he was, as this invention proves, 
riot meanly endowed. 

28. We have now come in the course of our inquiry, 
to consider man's social life and the mutual relations 
of that social life and artificial human language. 

Man's practical and speculative social life, integrally 
connected, as exhibited, first, without language in primi- 
tive, or so-called natural society, and then in the arti- 
ficial society formed by means of language, will therefore 
next claim our attention. 

29. The concrete beginning of all normal human 
society is the family. Its absolute beginning, like every 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 47 

absolute beginning, lies beyond the scope of our investi- 
gation. The male and female members of the first family 
or families, if there were more than one family at first, 
were associated by a practical common covenant made 
with each member for their common benefit, by the supe- 
rior spirit, God; and initiated by his promise, symbolized 
by the rainbow, that the laws of nature, so long as man 
conforms to them, will continue to act uniformly for the 
benefit of all men. The acceptance by man of this 
promise, by habitually making use of the laws of 
nature, and acting with reference to them, completed 
the covenant as a contract between God and man, and 
implied man's assent, and virtually his promise that the 
laws of nature will be utilized by him in the way God 
intends them to operate; that is, not only for the indi- 
vidual benefit of man, but also for the common welfare 
of all his fellow-men, who are all equally the objects of 
God's care. 

This covenant between God and man is the original 
and continuing social contract. God's promise, man's 
acceptance of it, and its resulting binding obligation, 
are all proved, on one side, by the continuance of the 
uniformity of the laws of nature, and their manifest 
purpose; and, on the other side, by man's intelligent use 
of them, and by his social arrangements whose avowed 
object is the general welfare. 

30. Man's earliest intercourse with animal life and 
plant life tended to develop his normal practical action, 
his moral nature. In his conduct towards animals, as 
fellow living beings, although not human, yet serviceable 
to him, he might exhibit the rudiments of morality in 



48 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

kindness and gratitude. Animals domesticated for his 
use claim from him a gentle and forbearing as well as 
firm treatment, devoid of cruelty and of unnecessary 
harshness. In opposing formidable or noxious animals, 
he learns the duty he owes himself, to defend his rights 
of person, with prudence and resolution, against violence 
and oppression. There are also moral considerations in 
man's conduct toward plants. While their use and 
consumption as necessary, is allowable, their wanton 
destruction, or abuse, may be immoral. The removal of 
forests may render, as it probably has rendered, extensive 
regions of fertile country comparatively barren, and it 
may therefore become a public crime. Careless or negli- 
gent cultivation of j)lants necessary for human subsist- 
ence, by those who have undertaken it, is manifestly 
blameworthy. 

The obligations of man resulting from his relations 
to animal life and plant life, impose on him rudimentary 
moral duties. Some of the obligations of man to out- 
ward animal life are expressed by the statistics of the 
extensive interests involved in animal culture and the 
fisheries; to plant life by the mere terms agriculture, gar- 
dening, horticulture and floriculture; and to both animal 
and plant life, by the clothing he wears, representing the 
vast textile manufactures of wool, cotton, flax and hemp. 
Now, all these obligations, showing the dependence of 
his life on outward living things, and awaking in him 
the theoretical sentiment of thankfulness to them, 
although he lacks the power to repay their benefits, 
prepare him for the grateful experience of his indebted- 
ness to the help of his fellow-men, and for actually 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 49 

reciprocating, by his services, as he has the power to do, 
their helping practical love. 

31. But, it is in human society that the moral obliga- 
tions of man to man under the original and continuing 
social contract, which may be simply called the social 
contract, arise. They demand for their ascertainment 
the highest speculative action of man, and for their real- 
ization his purest and most energetic moral practical 
action. For their discharge requires the fulfillment by 
him of the social contract, and, for this purpose, its 
investigation and a review of the laws of nature, which 
it binds man both to study and to utilize, as well for his 
fellow-man as for himself. 

The laws of nature, as we have seen, are the uniform- 
ities of God's action, as manifested in the motions of 
the inorganic world. They are called, when appre- 
hended as conceptions by man's spirit, Principles; and 
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action, or 
the whole interrelated system of his action, as an integral 
whole of action, may be called, when apprehended by 
man's spirit as one complex conception, the First or 
highest Principle, from which all other principles, as 
its integral parts, may be deduced. 

The First Principle is the highest principle at once of 
knowledge and of practice, — of the speculative reason 
and of the practical reason; that is, of the integral action 
of man's spirit. 

The laws of nature, and the first principle which 
includes them all, exhibit not only the variety, and 
energy, and scope of God's action on inorganic matter, 
but also both his wisdom or intelligence in guiding that 



50 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

action, and his moral character in determining the rela- 
tions of his action to the spirit of man. The first prin- 
ciple, therefore, exhibiting the moral character of God 
for man's imitation, involves the whole moral law. 

32. There are five elementary activities, both of in- 
dividual and of social life, constituting five distinct 
common or universal social ends; which are, education, 
religious service, industry, charity, and government. 
The extreme complexity of society arises from the fact 
that each individual takes part, in different degrees, in 
each of these elementary activities. But, as the in- 
stinctive practical action of man's individual spirit, 
guided by his instinctive thought, constructed the 
amazingly complicated and wonderfully perfect organ- 
ism of his individual body, so the combined instinct- 
ive practical action of man, associated with his fellow- 
man by the original universal social contract, which 
includes in the first principle the moral law, gradually 
built up, in the lapse of ages, under the guidance of 
his instinctive thought, by means of his sensuous ideas, 
the still more complicated instinctive mechanism of the 
normal universal society of mankind. 

This society, even in its primary form, must be 
regarded as an integral whole; each of its individual 
members being engaged, in different degrees, in each 
of the five elementary social activities as a common 
social end. The conservative analysis of the primary 
universal society, therefore, must be based on these five 
elementary social activities, and must be purely ideal, 
exhibiting five integral parts corresponding to them. 
These integral parts of society are its five Integral Organs, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 51 

each devoted to one of the primary social activities. All 
these integral organs, therefore, are numerically iden- 
tical; each as integral interpenetrating all the others. 
Just as the same body of individuals may constitute at 
the same time a school, say, of philosophy, a church, 
an industrial association, a charitable corporation, and 
a local government; all exercising their different func- 
tions either successively, or, if at the same time, then 
by separate representatives for each separate function. 

This early society being natural, or without language, 
and its shifting, roving, wandering groups of individuals 
and families being, respectively, like the atoms and 
molecules of a fluid body, tended to become unstable, 
and to have its loosely cohering elements constantly 
arranged and re-arranged in ever varying combinations. 

Yet, it must be regarded, from the beginning, as an 
undenominational association of all the integral organs; 
each of them being considered as a separate social 
denomination in theory, while all of them are simul- 
taneously and indistinguishably active in practice. But 
in the natural course of the development of society each 
of its integral organs would be subdivided into partial 
organs, and these into smaller associations, each devoted 
to the special care of one of the particular social in- 
terests, involved in one of the common social ends. The 
lowest of these subdivisions, in each integral organ, would 
then require a certain permanency in the association of its 
members, for mutual support in its practical work; and 
would establish permanent primary local neighborhoods, 
and thus gradually localize and solidify society. 



52 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The instinctive organization of society, established 
by the original and continuing social contract between 
God and man, is based on the first principle; and, so far as 
it is the co-operation of all the primary social activities, 
it is like that principle, which is the co-operation of all 
principles. It is the undenominational germ of society, 
an undenominational association, involving all the social 
activities and interests that tend to the individual and 
the general welfare of man. Its integral organs will 
re-appear, further developed by language, in artificial 
society, as the separately organized, independent, co- 
ordinate, and numerically identical republics of letters 
and art, of the church, of industry, of charity, and of 
government. For natural society, after the invention of 
language, became artificial society. 

But the normal development of the original unde- 
nominational association of natural society, by means of 
language and of the principle of the division of labor, 
into normal artificial society, cannot be traced in history. 
It can only be inferred from the historical development 
into modern civilization of the undenominational asso- 
ciation of Jesus and the twelve disciples, by means of 
the revived principle of representation, as will be seen 
hereafter. Before Christianity, there were seen in his- 
torical times, outside of the great heathen monarchies, 
only single tribes under patriarchs and chiefs in various 
parts of Asia, Europe and Africa, except twelve tribes 
occasionally loosely united in Palestine under a judge; 
and only single cities in Asia Minor, Arabia, Africa, 
Greece, and Italy, under different kings; the kings in 
the cities of Greece and Italy, being for a time super- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 53 

seded respectively by separate democracies or aristoc- 
racies. The great despotic monarchies were consolidated 
by conqnest. But nowhere, before Christianity, could 
tribes or cities be seen united by representation into larger 
political communities. 

Nor can the origin of language, by means of which 
natural society was converted into artificial society, be 
historically traced. Something of the nature of language 
has already been anticipated. We now proceed to its 
uses in society. 

33. Language is a system of sensuous ideas external- 
ized by means of conventional, oral, graphic, plastic or 
mimic signs. Prayer, or the communion of man with 
God in instinctive thought, by means of the sensuous 
ideas, probably first suggested language. This com- 
munion was carried on with the sensuous ideas, because 
God, being omnipresent and omniscient, could know 
them while they were within man. But instinctive 
thought could not be communicated by man to his 
fellow-man by the sensuous ideas alone, for one could 
not look upon them in another. Hence, appeared the 
obvious necessity to externalize them, by signs repre- 
senting them by representing the objects which the ideas 
represented; and by other conventional signs, indicating 
the relations and motions of those objects. 

Language as the body of conventional outward signs 
of the inward sensuous ideas, by gestures, sculptures, 
paintings, cries, oral and written words, — is perhaps 
man's most important invention, and it doubtless re- 
quired many centuries to obtain approximate perfection. 
But no language can fully represent the innumerable, 



54 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

individual, concrete, sensuous ideas. Nor can language 
successfully compete, either in the speed or the certainty 
of reaching results, with the sensuous ideas. 

The superiority of the sensuous ideas compared with 
mere verbal descriptions, is evinced by the effect of ob- 
ject lessons, practical experiments, plans and diagrams, 
in teaching physical and mathematical sciences. A 
verbal description of a physical object, as a plant, an 
animal, or a mineral; or a verbal demonstration of a 
geometrical theorem, as that the square of the hypo- 
thenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of 
the squares of the other two sides, would convey a 
very inferior degree of knowledge compared with the 
effect either of a specimen of the physical object, or of 
a diagram representing the steps required to prove the 
theorem. The sensuous ideas which the names of the 
physical objects and the statement of the theorem would 
produce, would probably be either altogether false, or 
indistinct and confused; while the sensuous ideas result- 
ing from a view of the specimens and of the diagram, 
would be clear and distinct. 

By far the greater part of thought, therefore, con- 
tinued from the first, as it still continues, to be instinct- 
ive; and only its final or partial results, and not its 
intermediate processes, are what language concerning 
any subject matter was first used, and is still chiefly 
used, to communicate. Hence language was invented 
to communicate, but not to supersede, the instinctive 
thought that is carried on by means of the sensuous ideas. 

For the social contract imposes the obligation, not 
only to learn by solitary instinctive thought, but to use, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 55 

in common with others, and for this purpose to com- 
municate, to teach, the laws of nature, or the first prin- 
ciple; and the society formed by the social contract 
requires the frequent communication of a common end 
or object, as can best be done by language, in order to 
form the various co-operative associations that constitute 
society. 

Language, from the first, therefore, was chiefly useful 
in furthering agreements, contracts, and associations 
among men, by expressing through signs intelligible to 
them all objects proposed for their common assent or 
pursuit. It was in this way that society, by the employ- 
ment of language as an artificial means of communicat- 
ing thought for its development, became artificial. 

There is no ground for assuming that in the primitive 
society, before the invention of language, called natural 
society, the action of man, however limited or imperfect, 
became abnormal or immoral. The rise of moral evil, 
and of abnormal social action, must be sought, as will 
be explained hereafter, in artificial society. The separate 
beginning, however, of artificial society cannot be exactly 
defined; because, while language was the means by which 
artificial society was made, it was artificial society that, 
by its agreement, established the significance of language. 
Hence, the concrete beginning of each is the simul- 
taneous concrete beginning of both. 

34. The rise of abnormal action, or of moral evil 
and intellectual error, may be traced to the abuse of 
language in artificial society; moral evil being the result 
of intellectual error, and language, as an imperfect 
human invention, being suited to communicate either 



56 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

truth or falsehood; while the marks imprinted on the 
sensuous ideas by the forces of nature can only express 
the truth of facts. Not only antinomies and paralo- 
gisms, but also all false doctrines spring, not from the 
sensuous ideas, but from the unskilful manipulation of 
language. 

Moral evil results, not from the erroneous teaching 
of mathematical or of physical science, but from im- 
parting a false intellectual conception of the character 
of God. For the man that is taught to know and that 
does know the true character of God, as the impersona- 
tion of truth and goodness, power and love, knows also 
that he is in God's immediate presence; and in that 
presence his unfeigned reverence and awe, with all that 
is noble in his nature, are called forth, and he does 
not dare to think evil, or do evil, even if he could. 
On the other hand, when man is taught to regard God 
as an idol, or an immoral monster, he gathers courage 
from the imagined example of his idol, as its devoted 
follower and worshipper, to commit all the evil to which 
his own unbridled passions tempt him. 

It seems probable, therefore, that moral evil, or the 
abnormal moral action of individuals in early artificial 
society, originated in idolatry, or resulted from it; as this 
did from imperfect and misleading forms of language, 
misdescribing God's character; breaking up the potent 
unity of his perfect personality into a weak assemblage 
of comparatively insignificant, personified, individual, 
divine powers and attributes, associated with personified 
and deified human crime; forming a grotesque, abomin- 
able hierarchy of vile and wicked sun gods, moon 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 57 

gods, star gods, bird gods, fish gods, beast gods, and 
snake gods, besides monstrous so-called good and evil 
spirits. Figures of speech, however innocent they now 
are, doubtless aided, in ancient times with other forms 
of language, to establish idolatry. 

The scene in the garden of Eden, purporting to 
describe the origin of moral evil, shows both the abuse 
of language in a statement giving a false character of 
God as untruthful, and the resulting idolatry of Adam 
in believing that statement — a belief amounting to a 
departure from the God of Truth, and to the accept- 
ance, in his stead, of a false idol. For the attribution 
of immorality to God creates, in his stead, an idol of the 
imagination. 

Much time was required to elapse after man's inven- 
tion of his powerful mechanism of language, before he 
learned, if he has yet learned, to use it with absolute 
safety in his highest concerns. Hence it would be well 
to inquire, whether the greater part of the crime pre- 
vailing in modern civilization is not due to the wide- 
spread Oriental doctrines taught there, assigning to God, 
by an abuse of language adopted from heathenism, a 
cruel and immoral character. 

35. But, however idolatry originated, its absolute and 
almost universal sway over ancient society, and its trans- 
formation of that society into the system called an- 
cient heathenism, or Orientalism, is undoubted. For 
the original social contract and its first principle, with 
the instinctive organization of the primitive universal 
society, discovered by instinctive thought, were gradually 
reduced by idolatry and man's consequent abnormal 



58 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

practical action, except in the faintest outlines, to utter 
oblivion and neglect. 

The transition period of society from the original un- 
denominational association of primitive normal natural 
society, through the first stage of normal artificial society, 
before idolatry set in, — to those loose and promiscuous 
combinations of individuals and families that are found 
along with idolatry at the beginning of history, and 
were then subject to the mere customary rule of patri- 
archs or chiefs, supported by the influence of idolatry, 
in single independent tribes, — preceded all historical 
records and monuments. 

Only a myth or tradition of this period has come 
down to us. This transition period of society is what 
we may suppose to be meant by the tradition of the 
Golden Age. Because it was before the introduction of 
idolatry and of moral evil, it must have been a season of 
peace, unvexed by war. Its peaceful growth would par- 
tially develop its integral organs in local neighborhoods; 
and its localization would render its habitations perma- 
nent, and free from the disturbance of nomadism. Its 
masses, not being driven together and concentrated by 
conquest, or domineered over by military rule, must have 
been kept together in quietness and order by the delib- 
erate adoption of positive laws; which, in the absence of 
any so-called political superior, or despot, must have been 
enacted in the form of express contracts or agreements; 
and these, when extending over large territories, must 
have been negotiated and concluded by authorized agents 
or representatives of the people, although no trace of 
such ancient representation, has survived. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 59 

But, after some unknown lapse of time succeeding the 
supposed normal period of artificial society, the begin- 
ning of history records a very marked degradation of 
society, shown by nomadic wanderings, occasional con- 
flicts, and resulting offensive and s defensive wars of single 
tribes, under their respective patriarchs, against each 
other. Then, the elevation of a successful military 
leader in these wars as king over a tribe, instead of the 
patriarch; and the conquering wars of the king subduing 
and plundering tribe after tribe, and reducing them 
under his dominion, driving the population of conquered 
districts in herds, as slaves, to his capital, until he estab- 
lished, as king of kings, a vast predatory and conquering 
despotic empire; to be in turn shattered and broken in 
pieces by a mightier conqueror, is the often repeated out- 
ward history of the East. The despot superseded the 
patriarch. 

The patriarch was both the political ruler and the 
priest of his tribe; and the despot succeeded to the patri- 
arch's authority in both capacities. Thus was established 
the system of idolatrous despotism, or ancient heathen- 
ism, otherwise called Orientalism. 

To complete the picture of ancient heathenism, or 
Orientalism, its religious and domestic economy must be 
considered. To its outward military despotism must be 
added the description of its inward sacerdotalism, and the 
resulting slavery of its people. 

The patriarch, the king, and the king of kings, were 
supported in their political rule by the priestly office. 
The patriarch was his own priest. The king or despot 



60 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

employed a company or order of priests, a sacerdotal 
order for the support of his authority over the people. 

Institutions must be judged by their own characters, 
not by the characters of their casual incumbents. There 
have been in ancient times good patriarchs, good despots, 
and good priests, as goodness was accounted in their day. 
Abraham and Melchizedek were model patriarchs, but 
they did not originate patriarchism, which arose long 
before their time in idolatrous nations. Marcus Aure- 
lius, the Eoman despot, who lived thousands of years 
after the reputed author of despotism, Mmrod, was a 
Stoic philosopher; and although he conscientiously perse- 
cuted the Christians, he was notoriously endowed with 
all the Stoic virtues. Early Jewish history reports some 
good priests, but they disappeared in the glory of the 
prophets. 

A good patriarch or despot might allow and proclaim 
a God of justice and mercy. But a heaven-daring con- 
queror, making it the occupation of his life to form, and 
when the occasion offered itself, to execute plans for 
ravaging and laying waste extensive territories, and 
visiting with indiscriminate slaughter or slavery their 
unoffending populations, would not permit himself to be 
insulted by the worship of a just and merciful G-od. 
After the shining example of Mmrod, he allowed his 
creatures the priests, to proclaim his divinity. He 
would then through his priests, his sacerdotal order, 
command the worship of a wrathful, cruel, and unjust 
idol despot in heaven, to countenance the unjust and 
cruel despot on the earth. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 61 

He thus systematically debased his fellow-men, by 
enforcing the unworthy worship of himself, and of an 
idol like himself, as fellow-gods. For the series of 
ancient conquerors were a race of men as exceptionally 
strong in intellect, as they were wicked and unscru- 
pulous in practice, and they well knew that a God of 
love, and mercy, and pity for the people, is only suited 
to a democracy; while the cruel policy of despotism, 
conquest, and slavery, required the superstitious, super- 
natural support of a wrathful, unjust and cruel idol. 

In fact, the sacerdotal order in the despotism of Ori- 
entalism, or ancient heathenism, did as much to degrade 
and brutalize men, and fit them to become loyal and 
submissive subjects of the despots, as did the armies 
which the despots employed for that purpose. 

For this order, by its support of the despot's power, 
earned from him the unlimited privilege of plunder- 
ing the people by pretended mercenary religious services; 
and it stimulated the willingness of the people to bribe 
them for these services, by further debasing them with 
degrading superstition, first intensified by multiplying 
and diversifying their idols, and then utilized by 
assuming an official and confidential relation to these 
idols; and by asserting the ability to placate their Wrath 
and win their favor, by sacrifice, the universal cere- 
mony of idolatrous worship. 

Nor should it be forgotten that in ancient heathenism, 
or Orientalism, the same merciless cruelty of the ruling 
classes to the people, was exercised, when the people were 
submissive, by those classes towards each other, and their 
own members, and even by the nearest relatives. 



62 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Thus, it appears that, by the system of ancient heath- 
enism, the light of humanity was almost extinguished; 
mankind, with few exceptions, having been degraded into 
two classes of beasts: beasts of burden, and driving or 
ruling beasts. For, by this system, when idolatry and 
abnormal action became predominant, the instinctive 
germ of social organization, based on the native dignity of 
man as the image of God, on the original social contract 
of God with man, and on the first principle, was thor- 
oughly overthrown, broken up, disintegrated, and super- 
seded. The order in which the ruin of the integral organs 
of society took place, after they had been partially and 
symmetrically developed, according to the five primary 
individual and social activities, and had been, to some 
extent, duly localized by local neighborhoods or associa- 
tions, must have been as follows: first, the functions of 
the integral organ of the republic of government were 
usurped by the despot; secondly, the functions of the 
integral organ of the republic of the church were usurped 
by the sacerdotal order; thirdly, the integral organ of 
the republic of industry, as an association of freemen, was 
crushed by the despot and the sacerdotal order, by means 
of the universal slavery of the masses of the people; 
fourthly, by the same means, and the consequent universal 
misery of the masses of the people, and the isolation of 
the ruling classes from them, the integral organ of the 
republic of charity was rendered impossible as a public 
institution — although charity was not entirely obliterated 
by slavery, there having been at Kome, as is proved 
by tender inscriptions still to be read in the Catacombs, 
charitable associations, as for burial, among the unhappy 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 63 

slaves; and fifthly, the integral organ, or republic, of 
letters and art, was restricted, by the same means, either 
to the sacerdotal order alone, or to it along with the rich, 
learning having been monopolized by these classes, and 
no public education in which the poor could share hav- 
ing been established. 

Ancient heathenism, or Orientalism, founded on des- 
potism, idolatry, sacerdotalism, and slavery, was a vir- 
tually uniform system. Its primitive form, with very 
little variation of its essential features, dating from the 
mighty hunter of men, Mmrod, whose memory, to awe 
mankind by his pretended divine example, was enthroned 
by superstition and kingcraft in the brightest constella- 
tion of the Northern skies, Orion, has been handed down 
in regular succession, through the despotic and conquer- 
ing monarchs of Chaldaea, Assyria, Media, India, China, 
Persia, Parthia, Egypt, Greece, Imperial and Papal 
Eome — for the temporal power of the Pope is despotic — 
to the present Grand Turk, and the Tsar, with his Ori- 
ental Tartar rule of to-day. 

The system of ancient heathenism, or Orientalism, 
grew to be as universal as it was hideous and monoto- 
nous. Normal artificial society was altogether oblit- 
erated by it. Only an individual, here and there, 
remained, upon whose heart was written the law of God, 
and who led a normal life; testifying to the power of 
instinctive thought, when duly heeded, in the most unfa- 
vorable outward circumstances, to sustain man in the 
intimate communion with God, and to derive from that 
communion the energy of speculative and practical faith. 



64 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY, 

Doubtless, many such individuals, ojopressed by sla- 
very and despotic cruelty, lived in obscurity, and per- 
ished unknown. But a few others have achieved the 
brightest fame of history, and have indicated, amidst 
almost universal despotism and idolatry, the glory of 
humanity. Such were Pericles, Demosthenes, Socrates 
and Plato among the Greeks; Abraham, Moses, and the 
prophets, among the Jews ; the Gracchi and Cicero 
among the Romans ; Buddha, and perhaps Confucius, in 
the Eagt. 

But the name, in the splendor of which every other 
name of man must pale, is that of a child, whose birth in 
a poor and isolated family, in Bethlehem of Judea, is the 
new era, from which the revived normal artificial society, 
or the new Golden Age, called modern civilization, is 
dated. 



CHAPTER III. 

rTIHE doctrine and the practice of the Kingdom of 
-*- God, being the revival, by Jesus, of normal artifi- 
cial society from ancient heathenism, by means of the 
revival of the speculative side, and the consequent 
revival of the practical side, of the original or Semitic 
Philosophy. 

36. We will now inquire by what means, and how far, 
normal artificial society was first revived from ancient 
heathenism in modern civilization, or Christianity; what 
is its natural constitution, as revealed by instinctive 
thought; what steps backward it has taken in reaction 
towards ancient heathenism ; and what, afterwards, has 
been the course of its progress and reform, in its symmet- 
rical normal development. 

At the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the system of 
ancient heathenism, or Orientalism, in the despotic and 
coterminous empires of Eome and of Parthia, virtually 
covered the whole of the then known world; extend- 
ing in the Eoman Empire from the Atlantic to the 
Euphrates; in the Parthian, from the Euphrates to the 
farthest East. 

The Greeks had gloriously, but vainly, resisted and 
defeated at Marathon the entrance of Oriental despot- 
ism into Europe. For afterwards they succumbed to it 

65 



66 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

under one of themselves, a conqueror who surpassed the 
conquests, and adopted the despotism, of the kings of the 
East — the Macedonian Alexander, whose empire, in turn, 
was conquered, and whose despotism was imitated, by the 
Komans. 

Thus, despotism and idolatry, as the system of ancient 
heathenism, or Orientalism, were established throughout 
the known world, with the exception of the few persons 
on whose hearts was written the law of God. 

But the idolatry of the Roman Empire was not all 
polytheistic. For the great body of the widely dispersed 
Jews held fast, with wonderful heroic obstinacy, to the 
doctrine of monotheism, which they received from 
Abraham. Yet, it cannot be denied that the object 
worshipped by the majority of them was not that God 
of justice, mercy, and love proclaimed by their great 
prophets; but rather the popular ideal of a mighty and 
ferocious conqueror, whom they expected to batter down 
in blood and carnage, either in person or by a Messiah, 
the hosts of Rome and Parthia, and to divide their spoils 
among his favorites, the Jews. 

The savage and cruel being whom they imagined 
and worshipped must be classed among the idols of imag- 
ination; and their worship, as monotheistic idolatry. 

The idolatry, therefore, that prevailed, along with 
despotism, throughout the known world, at the birth of 
Jesus, was both polytheistic and monotheistic. 

The monotheistic idolatry of the Jews arose from their 
degrading the character of the true God of the original 
pure monotheism of Abraham to the level of the behavior 
of the cruel chief idols worshipped by the heathen 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 67 

nations. It was the monotheism of the Jews that gave 
them the power of resistance against the ineffable 
oppressions which they suffered from successive con- 
querors for thousands of years, and that enabled them to 
survive all their oppressors; but it was these oppressions 
that degraded and obscured the spirit of the Jewish peo- 
ple, and thereby caused the majority of them to lower 
their estimate of the character of God. Yet, there 
always remained, mostly in humble circumstances, a few 
who did not bow the knee to Baal, and among them, 
occasionally, a great prophet. 

It should cause no surprise, therefore, that in the 
general darkness of idolatry and despotism that had over- 
spread the world, a young Jewish villager, who, at the 
age of twelve, was carried by his zeal for the knowledge 
of the true God to the feet of the great teachers of his 
faith, in the Temple of Jerusalem; and who, by question- 
ing the travelers that regularly passed his door at Naz- 
areth with the great caravans from the far East to Tyre, 
Sidon, and Egypt, had opportunities to know all the 
forms of idolatry, and to learn the need of the world for 
enlightenment, should be inspired by the thought that 
the great Deliverer expected by his people must be a 
great enlightener; and should recognize in the conscious- 
ness of his own great power of thought and of expression, 
a call to assume that providential office for his day. For 
he saw that an enlightener or reformer of the world, 
necessarily beginning his reformation by instructing a 
small circle of pure monotheists, could most easily estab- 
lish that circle among the Jews, already monotheists, 
by purifying their monotheism. 



68 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

It was, accordingly, the monotheism of the Jews that 
as a Jew he first purified; so that as in its original purity 
it was made the foundation of Christianity; and it became, 
after his death, the vehicle for spreading Christianity, by 
means of the Jewish synagogues, scattered throughout 
the Eoman Empire. 

37. For it was necessary on account of the mono- 
theism of the Jews, although it was in some respects 
impure, but prevailing among no other people, that a 
Jew should become the reformer of the polytheistic 
idolatry of ancient heathenism. It was necessary for 
him to begin his reform in his own country, among his 
own countrymen, and in his own neighborhood, among 
his neighbors; in order that he might at once — in the 
brief period that his enemies would allow him — bring 
together, instruct, and inaugurate in action, a small 
association inspired by a pure monotheism, as a type of 
a new and normal artificial society, a present example 
of it, and as a germ or nucleus for future development. 

As the original normal artificial society must have 
been at first undenominational, and was as such over- 
thrown by idolatry, it was fitting that the revived 
normal artificial society should at first also be unde- 
nominational, and should be founded on the overthrow 
of idolatry by a pure monotheism; while the development 
of its social denominations, or separate integral organs, 
must be left to be called forth by the exigencies and 
opportunities of the future. 

The only way to remove error, is to teach the truth. 
The only way to remove the error of polytheism, with 
its related despotism, was to teach the truth of mono- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 69 

theism. To do this effectually it was apparent that — 
in order to produce an immediate and lasting effect on 
the vast heathen world — a band of zealous monotheistic 
teachers, missionaries, or apostles, was required who 
could be prepared for their mission in a short time. 
Such a band young Jesus, at thirty years of age, in his 
humble sphere of life, could only expect to find among 
the Jews, — his countrymen, his neighbors. These were 
already monotheists, prepared in that aspect to his hand. 
It only remained for him to select willing and able 
associates among his humble acquaintances; to purify 
their monotheism from some common prejudices, regard- 
ing their expected Messiah, and the true character of 
Grod; and to instruct them for their mission in the short 
time at his disposal. 

There was every reason why Jesus should seek in his 
great mission his associates among the Jews. The mono- 
theism of the Jews had separated them from all the 
peoples with whom they came in contact, who were all 
polytheists; and it had thereby made the associations of 
individuals and families among the Jews more sym- 
pathetic, more close, mutually more helpful, and more 
lasting, than among other non- Semitic nations; and thus 
it preserved the inward cohesion, and consequently the 
national vitality of the Jewish people; while in the calm 
of these domestic associations the idolatrous features of 
their monotheism would find nothing to call them forth; 
and the true character of God, revealed by instinctive 
thought and the sensuous ideas, and preached by the 
prophets, would at least dimly shine forth, and — so far 
as it was apprehended — would ennoble their intercourse, 



70 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

and give strength to their character. Their Mosaic 
institutions of civil law surpass in humanity any of the 
ancient heathen codes. 

38. In the way thus pointed out, Jesus of Nazareth, 
as a Jew, began at his home, among Jews, his reform 
movement. It is recorded of him, in books that are 
almost universally conceded to be authentic history, that 
he was born in Bethlehem, of Judea, of poor Jewish 
parents, his father being a carpenter; that in childhood 
he was taken to Egypt, and then brought to Nazareth, 
of Galilee, where he lived until about thirty years of 
age, when he began a public ministry of teaching, by 
proclaiming what he called the "Kingdom of God," or 
the " Kingdom of Heaven"; that he carefully instructed 
twelve men of the common people, and formed them 
into an association with himself, to spread his doctrine 
of the "Kingdom of God," and his association, among 
the people; and that, after a public career of about three 
years, preaching his doctrine with unexampled genius, 
eloquence, prudence, and intrepidity, — besides minister- 
ing charitably to all whom he met afflicted by sickness, — 
he suffered on the cross a heroic martyrdom for the 
cause he had advocated, saying of his doctrine, in almost 
his last utterance, that he was "born to bear witness 
unto the truth." 

39. By generously consecrating his young and pure 
life to the witnessing of the truth, he made that life its 
best witness, the true interpreter to all noble and sym- 
pathizing minds, of the formula "Kingdom of God," 
in which he summed its comprehensive import. 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 71 

The most eloquent of men, he distrusted the power 
of written language to adequately express the doctrine 
which he taught for all mankind, and for all time. For 
this reason he left nothing in writing. He committed 
his doctrine to the perfect instinctive mechanism of 
the sensuous ideas, aided by the oral tradition of his 
discourses. 

He simply addressed oral speech to the common 
people, to awaken their instinctive thought, and to call 
their attention to the systematic action and Providential 
care of God, manifested in the observed order of the 
universe. From the order of the universe, as the action 
of God, he drew the character of God, as the perfect 
ideal of goodness, love and wisdom, for man to imitate. 
He thus left all questions as to his doctrine to be 
answered for him by God as the supreme oracle in the 
temple of the universe. 

It will be more appropriate here to develop briefly 
the intrinsic meaning of the formula, Kingdom of God, 
in which he condensed and symbolized the whole import 
of what he taught, than to needlessly dwell on the con- 
vincing collateral testimony and authority which his 
life, as credibly reported, and already universally known, 
gave to his teaching. 

40. The formula, Kingdom of God, may be con- 
verted into the proposition, The Kingdom is of God. 
When Jesus proclaimed the formula, Kingdom of God, 
he asserted as a truth, that the Kingdom is of God. 
The sensuous ideas of the conception and of the asser- 
tion are the same. Now, in order to understand the 



72 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

teaching of Jesus, the meaning of the two terms, king- 
dom and God, must be clearly ascertained. 

The term God meant, in that formula, the God of 
pure monotheism, as already described; the one superior 
spirit of power, wisdom, goodness, justice, and love, far 
exceeding any attainment of man. The term, king- 
dom, meant concretely, the organization, order,' or sys- 
tem produced in anything by the action of spirit, and 
abstractly the power, authority, or guidance of the 
spirit that produces the organization, order, or system. 

The term, Kingdom of God, then, meant, concretely, 
the organization, order, or system, resulting in the 
material universe from the immediate action or power 
of God, and in the spiritual universe, and in a particular 
and primary sense among men, it denoted the normal 
society effected by God's instruction, discipline, and 
example, co-operating with the action of man. When 
the term, Kingdom of God, does not plainly mean the 
whole material and spiritual universe, it means the 
organization, the order, the co-operating union, associa- 
tion, or society of God with mankind. 

The term, kingdom, connected with the term God, 
cannot mean anything implied in human government. 
Such a meaning given to the term kingdom, in this 
connection, is an abuse of language, involving gross 
error, and leading to the most disastrous results; to an 
idolatry tending to thrust back modern civilization into 
all the evils of ancient heathenism. For the applica- 
tion of the term king to God in any sense implying 
functions of command analogous to those of a heathen 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 73 

king or despot, or any other human, royal prerogatives, 
is simply idolatry. 

Indeed, the conception of government between God 
and man, is absurd as well as idolatrous. Government 
inflicts punishment as an evil to make retribution for 
another evil. God inflicts no evil, and therefore no 
punishment. He administers discipline as a blessing; 
in order to lead the offender to repentance and reforma- 
tion. God is the rule for man to live by, to measure and 
direct his conduct, not man's ruler. If God should 
issue a command as a ruler or absolute king, it would 
be known to whomsoever it might be addressed, from 
one end of the universe to the other, as the still, small 
voice; and man could not fail to obey it. But his 
obedience would be a mere matter of necessity, and it 
would have, therefore, no moral value in his eyes or in 
the eyes of God. 

Man is in the power of God, dependent on his gifts 
and his guidance. God is at once his loving father, 
friend, associate, and his skilful employer, teacher, 
trainer, — in the school, in the field, in the workshop, 
and in the arena of life, — and man can only show his 
gratitude to God, by doing his duty and giving his 
assistance to his fellow-man, and thereby doing the 
work of God. For God asks of man no tribute of 
empty praise, or idle, sentimental love, or vain or costly 
sacrifice to him, — but calls on all to lend a hand and 
aid him in his work of universal blessing to mankind. 
The spiritual relation of man to God, is that of a 
scholar to a teacher, of a free apprentice to a just, 



74 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

wise, and good employer, and of a practical helper to 
God in bestowing his beneficence. 

The heathen depravation of God's character, by the 
attribution to him of heathen governmental functions, 
and of corresponding heathen acts, analogous to those 
of a human despot, or king, judge, or military leader, 
was the chief heathen or idolatrous element of the 
monotheism of the Jews. But the term kingdom, in 
the formula Kingdom of God, excludes every function 
of government. It merely designates the organization, 
order, or system of the material and spiritual universe, 
and particularly of normal society. 

This meaning of the term kingdom, in the formula 
Kingdom of God, will be further elucidated by the 
signification which Jesus evidently attached to the 
terms king and kingdom, when applied to himself 
and to his association with his disciples. For when 
he was called king before Pilate, he openly admitted 
the fact; but said that his kingdom was not of this 
world, meaning that it was not a government at all, as 
all real kingdoms of this world are, and that it certainly 
was not a revival of the Kingdom of David, which was 
unquestionably a real kingdom of this world; and this 
answer, with the reasons he gave for it, satisfied Pilate, 
who would not have dared to tolerate any government 
opposed to Caesar, as a rival kingdom of this world in 
Judea, and least of all a revival of the famous Kingdom 
of David. Jesus was directly charged by his accusers 
before Pilate, with setting up a government as king; 
but Pilate evidently thought him innocent of the 
charge, and said so; and yielded to his fears for himself 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 75 

in condemning Jesus, and not to his judgment, as he 
publicly confessed, by symbolically and ostentatiously 
washing his hands, to remove the guilt of the condemna- 
tion from his conscience, according to the form of his 
superstition. 

Jesus, in fact, never exercised any governmental office, 
and never performed any governmental act. In the only 
recorded case of his being sought to act governmentally, 
he expressly and publicly declined to do so, when 
called upon to divide a disputed inheritance — an act 
that would have belonged to a king or a judge, as govern- 
mental functionaries of a human government. The term 
king, therefore, as used by Jesus in relation to himself, 
must merely signify that he was the chief, or master of 
his disciples. The word translated king, in the text in 
question, denotes a master — as the master of a house or 
of a school; and it has, indeed, many more meanings, 
from signifying a heathen god or monarch, to a mere 
term of complimentary or nattering address to any 
person admitted for the occasion, or feigned, to be a 
superior. 

Hence, the kingdom of Jesus, which he expressly said 
was not like the heathen kingdoms, which were govern- 
ments, was merely the organization of the association of 
his disciples, which was an undenominational association, 
and of which he was the unquestioned head, or chief, 
or master, but without any governmental function or 
authority. Nor can it be doubted that the term King- 
dom of God must have an analogous meaning, denoting 
only the organization, the order, and the system, of the 
material universe, and of normal society. 



76 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

In confirmation of this view, the passage may be 
referred to, in which Peter is called, by Jesus, the rock 
on which his church — as the term for it is translated, or, 
as it may be otherwise called, his community — shall be 
built. The transaction is narrated in the usual figurative 
style of the time; and it probably means that Peter was 
then appointed, or foreordained, to succeed Jesus as the 
future head, or chief, or president of the first Christian 
community, Afterwards it appeared that he was* fol- 
lowed by James, when the first Christian community set- 
tled in Jerusalem; and that each of the other Christian 
communities, as they arose, had a separate head, not 
called a rock, but a bishop. Now, the bishop, as the 
head of a separate Christian community, did not, so long 
as it was undenominational, take the place of an apostle, 
but a place analogous to that of Jesus; not the place of a 
mere religious teacher, but the charge of the general 
interests of the community. But there is no pretense of 
any political government in any of these chiefs of the 
early Christian communities for more than a century 
after the death of Jesus. The term kingdom, then, in 
the formula Kingdom of God, must evidently be taken, 
as it is used in other connections, in a figurative sense. 
As a class, an order, or system of things, as of plants, is 
called a kingdom, so the Kingdom of God must signify, 
in a general sense, the system of the universe, and, in a 
particular sense, the system or organization of normal 
society, of the society based on the social contract, and in 
which man is the associate of God. 

41. It would be no easy task to state all that is 
implied in the formula, Kingdom of God. This task will 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 77 

not here be attempted. But a brief summary of what it 
implies may be given. The formula, Kingdom of God, 
has been already considered, on its speculative side, as 
implying the system of Semitic philosophy; and it will 
now be viewed, on its practical side, as implying the per- 
fect instinctive conception, or ideal, of the organization, 
or practical constitution of normal artificial society. 
Both sides constitute an integral whole, of which each is 
an integral part; so that its speculative side is only pre- 
dominantly speculative, and its practical side only pre- 
dominantly practical. 

Leaving, therefore, as already sufficiently explained, 
the speculative side of the Kingdom of God; the mechan- 
ism of instinctive thought, with the sensuous ideas; the 
laws of nature as the uniformities of God's action, and 
their sum as the uniformity of the uniformities of his 
action, or the first principle; with the moral law, as the 
moral features of God's action towards man, involved in 
the first principle; we proceed to the social contract of 
God with man, as determining, in connection with the 
primitive individual and social activities of man, the per- 
fect organization or practical constitution of normal arti- 
ficial society, or modern civilization. 

42. The primary activities of man are derived from 
the first principle, being copied from the action of God 
towards man. God instructs man, communes with him, 
furnishes him with the materials of his food and cloth- 
ing, aids him in his trials and necessities, and exercises 
over his conduct a wholesome discipline, designed to lead 
him to repentance and reformation. In all these par- 
ticulars, man engages, by the social contract, to imitate, 



78 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

towards all his fellow-men, the action of God, by utiliz- 
ing the laws of nature, which God provides; each man 
utilizing them both for his individual benefit and for the 
general welfare of all. 

Thus, corresponding, respectively, to the five primary 
individual and social activities of man, which may be 
called education, religious communion or service, indus- 
try, public charity, and government — there necessarily 
arise under the social contract, and are instinctively 
formed, five universal associations, as integral organs of 
society; in each of which every individual is a member 
more or less actively engaged, and all of which, practi- 
cally co-operating together, constitute the organization of 
normal artificial society. 

For the original and continuing social contract, as 
already stated, made and proved by acts, consists, on one 
side, in the inferred engagement of God to continue the 
uniform operation of the laws of nature for the common 
benefit of all men; and on the other side, in the inferred 
engagement of man, when he accepts the use of the laws 
of nature, to use them in the way they are obviously 
intended to be used. 

It follows, that in every social relation every indi- 
vidual is bound to make his own interest consistent with 
the general welfare; and that in every normal association 
God is virtually a member concerned for directing its 
common end in harmony with the benefit of the whole 
community. Man has very important duties to himself 
to discharge; so has every association, and every com- 
munity to itself; but these duties, when properly under- 
stood, must conduce to the well-being of the public. 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 79 

The five integral organs of society, or social denom- 
inations, as they may be called, have each, respectively, 
one of the primary social activities for its common end; 
and as every man must to some extent be engaged in all 
these activities, he must belong to all the integral organs. 
Hence, every integral organ must embrace all the people, 
and all the integral organs must be numerically identical, 
co-ordinate, and independent. 

Each of the integral organs, therefore, must be a 
republic, and must be organized by subdivision into 
appropriate partial organs, or associations. 

We have seen, that the original primitive or natural 
society, that preceded artificial society, must have been, 
at first, undenominational, holding, as a germ, all the 
social denominations, or integral organs, undeveloped 
within it; that afterwards these integral organs must 
have been to some extent developed; although, as this 
development took place before the commencement of 
history, its extent cannot be exactly determined; and 
that when history begins to throw light upon society 
all the normal social denominations or integral organs 
have disappeared, under the influence of idolatry, leav- 
ing in their place only an abnormal despotic government, 
and an abnormal sacerdotal church; these two abnormal 
institutions constituting the system of ancient heathen- 
ism, or Orientalism. 

43. We have seen, also, that Jesus began his reform 
movement for the overthrow of ancient heathenism, 
or Orientalism, by establishing, as the first typical 
Christian community, or germ of the new society of 
modern civilization, which he inaugurated, an undenom- 



80 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

inational association of twelve disciples, with himself at 
its head. 

It is from this germ, and by the influence of the 
formula, Kingdom of God, implying and perpetuating 
the perfect instinctive conception, or ideal, of the organi- 
zation of normal artificial society, that the five social 
denominations, or integral organs, which in their full 
normal realization must constitute perfect modern civili- 
zation, or the true Kingdom of God, here and hereafter, 
have been already to some extent partially developed, 
after many vicissitudes and obstructions from the 
unyielding power of ancient heathenism. Passing over 
the details of the outward history of this development, 
we will aim to follow its inward genesis. 

In the first place, it is plain, that with idolatry both 
sacerdotalism and despotism were removed by Jesus from 
the type which he instituted of modern society. 

The removal of sacerdotalism from the new society 
introduced freedom of thought from the slavish bonds 
and from the temporal power of superstition, by sepa- 
rating science from the dominion of false religion. It 
gave to true religion the enlightenment of true science 
by making both co-ordinate. It committed the interests 
of science, with the care of all principles, as included 
in the first principle, to the predominantly speculative 
integral organ, the republic of letters and art; while it 
assigned the service of God, or the preparation of man 
for worthy communion with him, here and hereafter, 
in immortal life, as the peculiar charge and duty of 
religion, to the practical integral organ, or republic, of 
the Church. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 81 

For this boon to science,, as well as to religion, and for 
the encouragement, among the masses of the unlearned 
people, as well as among the learned, of original thought, 
by entrusting the development of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of science and of religion, involved in the doctrine 
of the Kingdom of God, to the freedom, the mathematical 
and logical precision, and the instinctive mechanism of 
the sensuous ideas when used, with the aid of oral speech 
and of tradition, in the instinctive thought carried on 
in silence and seclusion by the common people, Jesus, 
as the Emancipator both of science and of religion from 
priestly rule, deserves the highest honors, both as the 
perpetual chief of the republic of letters and art, and 
as the founder of the republic of the universal, pure, 
spiritual, practical, and free catholic church. 

The effect of removing despotism, or the abnormal 
centralized state, all absorbed in an abnormal central- 
ized government, from the new society, was to replace 
despotism by a normal decentralized state, consisting of 
three separate and independent integral organs, each 
charged with one of the primitive social activities, or 
social common ends. These integral organs are, first, 
the integral organ, or republic of industry, restored to 
independence from the despotic interference of the 
government in all purely industrial concerns. Secondly, 
the integral organ, or republic of public charity, emanci- 
pated from the obstruction of government, and needed 
to purify, liberalize, and harmonize public social inter- 
course, by aesthetic, literary, and scientific public enter- 
tainments; to smooth over and overcome by its aid the 
temptations, difficulties, partial disasters, and disappoint- 



82 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

ments, arising from the operations of nature, and the 
competitions of society; to alleviate misfortunes, and to 
promote moral reforms. And, thirdly, a decentralized 
and simplified integral organ, or republic of government, 
confined to purely governmental functions, exercised by 
the people through their representatives, as a civil 
representative democracy; and aiming chiefly to secure 
the public defense, to maintain public order, to enact 
needed governmental positive laws, and to administer 
justice in the courts. 

Thus, by the removal of the abnormal systems of des- 
potism and sacerdotalism, constituting together ancient 
heathenism, or Orientalism, that had overspread the 
known world, Jesus brought into play the five integral 
organs or social denominations that together compose, 
by their co-operation, the normal organization or consti- 
tution of modern civilization. But this result, although 
undoubtedly due to the genius of Jesus, and embraced 
in his vision and design of the future Kingdom of God 
on the earth, was not effected at once. 

44. In fact, almost the only normal outward develop- 
ment of the early Christian communities, while they held 
fast to their pure monotheism, was their system of repre- 
sentation, according to which they each sent representa- 
tives to meet in a general council, for the consideration 
and dispatch of their common concerns. But this system 
was most important, being the mechanism by which the 
extremely complicated normal organization of each of 
the integral organs and of society, as a whole, can be 
brought into an orderly and practical system; and being 
the means by which the several Christian communities 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 83 

came to be considered together as having the unity or 
catholicity of one Christendom. 

It must be borne in mind that, as in the primitive 
natural society, so also in the type of modern society 
instituted by Jesus, the integral organ of government, 
on account of the absence in both of idolatry and moral 
evil, was only potential; Jesus, the head of modern 
society, having absolutely refused to perform any gov- 
ernmental function. Where there is no moral evil to 
be coerced, government would plainly be superfluous. 

But the advent and increase of moral evil logically 
tend to produce the realization of government, and to 
stimulate the activity of its functions; while, obversely, 
from the rise and multifariousness of government may be 
inferred the growth of moral evil. JSTor can it be doubted 
that the augmentation of moral evil, in the absence of 
polytheism, indicates as its cause the influence of mono- 
theistic idolatry, or the worship of an imaginary being, 
with an immoral or cruel and unjust character, instead 
of the just and loving G-od, For moral evil is the effect 
either of polytheistic or of monotheistic idolatry. 

45. Now, about the beginning of the third century, 
a sudden and ominous portent made its appearance in 
all the Christian communities. As if by common con- 
sent, they almost simultaneously adopted sacerdotalism 
and despotism in the place of their primitive constitu- 
tions. They had evidently determined to fight heathen- 
ism with its own weapons. The influence of Orientalism, 
or gnosticism, had prevailed. 

A revolution was made in Christendom by a ring 
composed of a banded few, calling themselves the clergy, 



84 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

to subvert the growing organic Christian system of civil 
representative democracy, and to substitute for it the 
heathen systems of subordination, and of arbitrary usurpa- 
tion. The clergy claimed to be the privileged few, the 
superiors of the people, who were called the laity, and 
were merely their subjects. The clergy formed them- 
selves into a sacerdotal order, a hierarchy, and their head 
assumed to be, with their support, an Oriental monarch, 
a despot, under the name of a bishop, in every Christian 
community. 

Outwardly, Christianity had relapsed into ancient 
heathenism. The revolution of reaction was completed, 
confirmed, and perpetuated by substituting the awful 
heathen religious ceremonial of bloody human sacrifice, 
represented in a mimic show, for the tender memorial 
service of the last supper instituted by Jesus. 

Corresponding to this sacrificial ceremonial, typifying 
the injustice and cruelty of the being to whom it was 
offered, the sacerdotal order adopted Oriental dogmas 
and mysteries, concocted in the fertile imagination of 
the idolatrous East, couched in delusive and unfamiliar 
forms of speech, but interpreted by the sacerdotal order 
to sustain its ambitious pretensions. 

Combinations of bishops in provincial councils, formed 
inner rings of the sacerdotal order, and a union of all the 
bishops in a general council, completed the ecclesiastical 
machine, the head of which became the bishop of Eome. 

46. The ecclesiastical machine of Christianity had, 
after the labor of a century, in the year 325 A. d., 
undermined the authority of the avowed heathen sacer- 
dotal system in the Roman Empire; when the heathen 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 85 

emperor, Const antine, who was at once the head of the 
heathen sacerdotal system as its Pontifex Maximus, and 
of the military machine of the empire as emperor, con- 
ceived the practical plan of securing for himself the 
powerful support of the Christian ecclesiastical machine 
by a compromise of its impure monotheism with the 
shaken and effete polytheism of the Roman sacerdotal 
order. Accordingly, Constantine, with a view to such 
a compromise, proposed a conference with the Christian 
ecclesiastical machine, which met him in full force in 
a general council at Nicea; and over which he presided 
as the heathen Pontifex Maximus, representing the poly- 
theistic element of the empire. The result of the con- 
ference was the adoption of the so-called Mcene creed, 
one of the conflicting Oriental or gnostic dogmas that 
had invaded Christianity from the East; and which the 
shrewd imperial Pontifex Maximus foresaw would easily 
admit of a sufficiently idolatrous interpretation to satisfy 
the entire heathen element of the Roman Empire; al- 
though he was somewhat vexed and disappointed to find 
that it did not receive the unanimous support of the 
bishops. 

Soon followed the irruption of the barbarous and 
idolatrous masses of the Roman Empire, with their gross 
superstition, into the Christian church, or the so-called 
conversion of the Roman Empire; and the Christian 
ecclesiastical ring was elevated at once to a pitch of 
opulence, splendor, pomp, luxury, and power, unsur- 
passed by any sacerdotal order in the most idolatrous 
ages and populations of the East. 



W SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

47. From that time to the present, as logical results 
of the prevailing impure monotheism of Christianity, the 
Christian ecclesiastical ring or machine, representing the 
Oriental sacerdotal order, on one hand, and the Christian 
military machine, or military government, representing 
Oriental despotism, on the other hand, have almost 
everywhere, with occasional prudent relaxations, or 
necessary exceptions, outwardly dominated the unre- 
sisting masses of the people, in the larger part of what 
is called modern civilization. But the final frustration 
of the ecclesiastical machine's attempt to subdue the 
state under the church by its claim of temporal power 
in Europe, has saved the people there from a worse than 
Mohammedan rule. 

Of the crimes of the ecclesiastical ring, which is also 
the model of the military ring, I do not propose here 
to speak; but of its errors, or rather of its one funda- 
mental error, — its impure monotheism, or monotheistic 
idolatry, from which all its well-known historical crimes 
and persecutions have proceeded, — it was necessary that 
something should be said in its proper place. In the 
criminal rivalry of the church and the state for supre- 
macy over each other, the state was as guilty as the 
church. 

In the Roman Empire the Christian church and state 
were only partially separated. The emperor arrogated 
much authority over the church. Theodosius made a law 
punishing heresy with death. Some judicial authority 
was granted to the bishops, and they usurped more, 
thereby intruding on the functions of the state; but not 
more grossly than the state had trespassed upon the 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 87 

functions of the church. In this respect the church and 
the state of Christianity were equally heathenized. 

48. Having shown the outward career of Chris- 
tianity to have been a sudden, early, and persistent 
relapse into the system of ancient heathenism, we will 
now as briefly trace its inward development. Under the 
surface of society, below the rings and classes that had 
usurped ecclesiastical and political authority over them, 
the common people, the descendants and successors of 
those to whom the gospel of the Kingdom of God was 
preached by Jesus, have always preserved, with the 
formula or symbol, Kingdom of God, the tradition of 
the main points of its development, as orally delivered 
by Jesus to his disciples. By means of this tradition, 
they were always, and they are still, fully able, by their 
instinctive thought, aided by their experience, their 
sensuous ideas, and their personal communion in prayer 
with God, to reconstruct, develop, and apply to present 
circumstances, the doctrine that Jesus taught. 

For, what Jesus taught was not a figment of the 
imagination, an invention, a fantastic dream, a fiction, a 
creation of his unequalled genius; but the truth, com- 
mitted to him, as he said, by the Father, to be com- 
municated to all men, — the truth of God, and as such 
suited to the common understanding of all men, and 
which they can find, where Jesus found it, written for 
their benefit in the heart, on the face of nature, and 
proclaimed in God's Providence. 

It was an idle, as well as a wicked thing, for the Chris- 
tian hierarchy, or ecclesiastical ring, to pretend to have 
received the deposit, and to have the exclusive custody 



88 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

of the true faith, as they called it, or of the doctrine 
taught by Jesus. "While the people could elect their 
religious leaders and teachers, these could be held in 
check, and could be relied upon, to keep alive the pure 
tradition of the Kingdom of God. But when the clergy 
separated themselves from the people, and formed them- 
selves into a self-constituted body of priests, they cut 
themselves off from the true line of tradition, and their 
tradition became as worthless, and for the same selfish 
reason, as the tradition of the Pharisees. 

The claim of the ecclesiastical ring to be the infallible 
church is utterly untenable, for the church is the people. 

The true supernatural revelation is the First Principle, 
and that is not confided to the ring; but is open to the 
interpretation of every one who will diligently consider 
it, and seek its instruction. In view of the fact that the 
truth of the Kingdom of God is traceable in the First 
Principle, and is a common possession, which, as to 
man's ordinary wants, may be utilized by all men, and 
as to his higher spiritual needs may be enjoyed as a 
solace by all those who have higher aspirations, the infer- 
ence is clear, that among the masses of the people, a large 
proportion of whom were slaves, though of the white 
race, in the Eoman Empire, and as intelligent as most 
of their masters, there would be, in large volume and 
measure, an ever renewed tradition of the comforting 
doctrine of Jesus. Nor is it probable that the Christian 
sacerdotal order, who were for several centuries chiefly 
concerned to mingle in the pursuit of wealth among the 
rich, would attempt to inculcate their peculiar dogmas, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 89 

with the care their teaching required, upon the unprofit- 
able poor, to the exclusion of that tradition. 

49. It is not asserted, that the Christian sacerdotal 
order altogether ignored the popular tradition of the 
doctrine of the Kingdom of God; for the tradition was 
vouched for by martyrdoms of world-wide renown, and 
was afterwards reduced to writing in documents made 
imperishable by it, and which in turn sustain the tradi- 
tion; but that this sacerdotal order made the tradition 
of the facts and doctrines of the true primitive Chris- 
tianity entirely subordinate to the dogmas they invented 
or imported from the East, altogether outside of Chris- 
tianity, and operating merely to support and magnify 
the authority and power of the order, as a self-constituted 
non-representative ruling body, over society. 

50. After the lapse of more than sixteen hundred 
years from the revolution which transformed the simple 
and unassuming elective bishops, or overseers, of the 
early Christian communities into Oriental despotic mon- 
archs, then banded these bishops, with those persons 
who officially assisted them in the ceremony of religious 
worship, from presbyters and deacons down to the door- 
keepers, as a clergy, into a self-constituted, non-repre- 
sentative Oriental sacerdotal order, or religious ring, and 
gradually adopted or devised, outside of primitive Chris- 
tianity, Oriental dogmas, that afterwards grew into a 
permanent creed or symbol, tending to consolidate and 
perpetuate that sacerdotal order, it would be difficult 
now to correctly assign the motives of those engaged in 
the movement. It may be that the revolution met with 
no opposition from the masses of those communities, 



90 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

composed to a great extent of slaves and of very sim- 
ple and poor persons not accustomed to take part in 
public affairs. It may be that the increasing pressure 
and persecution of the heathen government seemed to 
make it necessary for the Christian communities, who 
could no longer hide their meetings in upper chambers, 
in grave-yards, or other out-of-the-way places, at night, 
to have leaders analogous to those of their oppressors, 
and vested with authority to enforce unquestioning obe- 
dience for the general good, in the sudden and distressing 
exigencies that frequently occurred. 

But, whatever were the motives of those concerned in 
this reyolution, a Christian sacerdotal order was then 
established; Oriental dogmas were then, and shortly 
afterwards adopted by it, and those dogmas have ever 
since helped to strengthen that sacerdotal order. 

That sacerdotal order, the clergy, never burned nor 
otherwise tortured, in any way, any person for violating 
the Christian moral law, — for not paying his debts, or 
not supporting his family, or for any fraud or violence 
against his neighbor. But, if any man, woman or child, 
whispered, or even formulated in silent thought a doubt 
concerning any one of the Oriental, or gnostic dogmas, 
tending to maintain the authority of the clergy, they 
would set up a court of inquisition, that by the most bar- 
barous and exquisite tortures and fiendish cunning would 
extract a confession of the doubt, and condemn the victim 
to be burned at the stake. Thus, if any person doubted 
the doctrine of transubstantiation, or of the real pres- 
ence, or of the trinity, or of the autocracy, or absolute 
political power of the pope, he was condemned to be 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 91 

burned alive, and his property was forfeited to the clergy 
and the state. 

The punishment of secret thought, by the Christian 
sacerdotal order, was a refinement of heathenism that no 
heathen sacerdotal order had ever imagined. The crim- 
inality of the condemnations of the Inquisition is aggra- 
vated by the fact that it blasphemously asserted that they 
were made for the glory of God, when in fact they were 
decreed for the support of the sacerdotal order. The 
crusades against the Waldenses of the Alps, and the 
Albigenses of southern France, were cruel, wholesale 
executions by order of the Inquisition. 

To be just to the clergy, it must be stated that they 
did not themselves burn their victims; but only " com- 
manded, and that under the most awful threats, that 
the fire be lighted, and the victim tied to the stake by 
others." [Milman, L. C, VII., 437.] 

51. The demoralized state of Christendom stepped 
forward and executed the commands of the Christian 
sacerdotal order. In England a statute, " de comburendo 
hseretico," was passed under Henry IV., in 1400. In 
Continental countries of Europe it is believed that no 
special statute or law for the purpose was considered 
necessary, and that the governments simply obeyed the 
orders of the clergy in burning its victims. 

The complicity of the governments, or military ma- 
chines of Europe, as the successors of heathen Oriental 
despotism, in the abnormal action of the Christian sacer- 
dotal order, in the matter of burning so-called heretics, is 
evident. This may be said of the governments of Europe 



92 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

in general, Protestant and Roman Catholic; both before 
and since the so-called Protestant Reformation. 

52. The military governments of Europe have also 
adopted the heathen governmental maxims of Oriental- 
ism — the maxims sanctioning offensive war and conquest, 
and those permitting the arbitrary rule over the people 
by a hereditary governing class of kings, emperors and 
nobles. 

53. It may be said, therefore, on the one hand, that 
the primitive Christian community, inaugurated by Jesus 
as the Kingdom of God, has outwardly relapsed into 
modern forms of that ancient heathenism, or of that 
sacerdotalism and despotism which Jesus had completely 
excluded from it. For all abnormal action, or moral 
evil, as already stated, results from idolatry, and may be 
called heathenism; while normal action is in accordance 
with the Kingdom of God. And it may be added that 
the modern, like the ancient forms of heathenism, origi- 
nate from the same cause: namely, from that mode of 
idolatry that consists in attributing a false or immoral 
character to God. 

54. But, on the other hand, the primitive Christian 
community has developed itself in partial accordance with 
the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, as taught by Jesus, 
into forms of modern civilization, altogether foreign to 
ancient heathenism. 

The Christian church, notwithstanding its sacerdotal- 
ism, has divided itself into the two inchoate, but dis- 
tinct, integral organs, formerly combined in the sacer- 
dotal church: namely, the republic of letters and art, 
and the republic of the true church. Likewise the 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 



93 



Christian state, notwithstanding the modified despotism 
of its military government, has also unfolded itself into 
the three separate integral organs, which were before 
compressed into it in the despotic state: namely, the 
republic of industry, the republic of public charity, and 
the republic of government. 

The separation of the inchoate republic of letters and 
art, from the sacerdotal church, was caused by repeated 
revivals of letters; first proceeding from the Mohammedan 
Arabs, who soon after their conquest of degenerate 
Christian countries, far surpassed the Christians in 
literature, especially in Spain; then from the culture 
inspired by the wealth and industrial activity of the free 
cities; then from the Christian schools and universities, 
and especially from the study of philosophy and of the 
newly found civil law taught there; then from Abelard, 
Arnold of Brescia, and the school men; then from 
Savonarola, Wyclifie, Huss; then from the renaissance of 
the study of the Creek classics on the fall of Constan- 
tinople; and then from the invention of printing and 
paper. 

The sacerdotal church attempted in vain, by the 
Inquisition and by the crusades against the Albigenses 
and the Waldenses, to check the advance of learning and 
of liberal thought, which it correctly supposed would 
undermine its sacerdotal authority. But the inchoate 
republic of letters and art defended and saved, as it must 
ever do, the cause of truth. 

The separation of the inchoate integral organ or 
republic of industry from the military or heathen state, is 
still only partially accomplished. The first step of the 



94 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

separation was caused by the remarkable revival of indus- 
try in the cities, beginning in the old Koman municipal 
towns of Italy, soon after the completion of the barba- 
rian conquest of the Western Koman Empire, and 
extending rapidly to the cities of Spain, France, Flan- 
ders, Holland, England, Switzerland and Germany. 
The object pursued by this industrial movement, and 
accomplished by it in the course of centuries, was to 
emancipate the industrial classes from the oppression and 
virtual slavery imposed upon them by the feudal, which 
had succeeded the Eoman government. 

This revival of industry caused also a partial develop- 
ment of the integral organ or republic of public charity, 
by supplying funds for endowing and operating many 
charitable institutions and associations. 

The revival of industry further affected the govern- 
ment, by enabling the cities to obtain their freedom, and 
secure it by charters, from the feudal government. 
This tended to somewhat mitigate the heathenism, or 
despotism, of the government by introducing representa- 
tion from the now important cities in the legislatures of 
different European nations — as Cordova, France, England, 
Germany, and Switzerland; and by securing for a time, 
until grossly abused, the independence of the cities of 
Italy. 

But it must not be forgotten, that the most reformed 
of the European governments, in 1350, in the reign of 
Edward III., retained enough of its heathen character 
to retard the organization of the republic of industry, 
by passing an act of parliament which fixed the rate 
of the wages of working-men, forbade them to contract 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 95 

for higher wages, and punished as crimes combinations 
among them to defend their rights. 

55. While the disintegration of the sacerdotal church 
and of the despotic or military state was progressing, as 
above stated, a conflict between them for mastery was 
carried on with great vigor; the sacerdotal order, on one 
side, claiming supreme temporal power over the state, 
and the state, on the other side, claiming authority to 
rule the church. The sacerdotal order of the western or 
Koman Catholic church, by various devices, succeeded in 
obtaining the temporal power it sought, after abandoning 
the less energetic Greek church to itself, so far as this 
enterprise was concerned; and during the thirteenth cen- 
tury the authority of the sacerdotal order of the Eoman 
Catholic church over the state in western and central 
Europe became despotic, and was despotically used. 
After that time, the temporal power of the sacerdotal 
order gradually declined, and by the so-called Protestant 
Eeformation it was entirely thrown off from the states 
that adopted Protestantism; while the power of the people 
in the government gradually increased; results that may 
be fairly attributed to the rise and partial development of 
the two modern or revived integral organs, or republics, 
of letters and art, and of industry. 

56. It may be stated, as an inference from all the pre- 
ceding observations, that there is a controlling and 
attracting unity, and a corresponding simplicity, pre- 
siding over and ordering all the manifold variety of 
being, of thought, and of action, in the universe. By 
tracing the individual man in his examination of self- 
consciousness, and in his relations as well to the inor- 



96 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

ganic as to the organic world, to the inferior spirits of 
plants and animals, to the equal spirits of his fellow-men, 
to the one superior spirit, God, to the laws of nature, as 
the uniformities of God's action, to the uniformity of 
those uniformities, as the one First Principle of all truth 
and of all normal practice, and to the one original and 
continuing social contract of God with man, developed 
from that principle; we have arrived at the unity of per- 
fect society, as the Kingdom of God, or the association of 
God with man, in the one universal society of the races of 
mankind. Moreover, as there is only one external source 
of all normal human action, namely, the example of 
God's moral character manifested in the First Principle, so 
there is only one internal source of man's abnormal action, 
or of moral evil, namely his error or ignorance as to the 
true moral character of God. Leading to man's depart- 
ure from imitating that character, this error is also a 
virtual denial of the true God, by falsely attributing to 
God a character false, cruel, or otherwise immoral. It 
is the monotheistic idolatry, which is the single cause to 
which may be assigned all the crime, the secret sin, and 
the discord prevailing, not only in ancient heathenism, 
but also in modern civilized society. To this fact the 
attention of every church should be directed. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that, the fun- 
damental internal cause of the moral evil and of all 
crime and ignorance in modern society being a single 
error, the nature of which can be plainly taught, which 
can be removed by instruction, and only by instruction, 
being the original and prime heresy of monotheistic 
idolatry, into which the sacerdotal Christian church early 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 97 

fell; it was to overcome by the truth of God this heresy, 
inducing and including all the other heresies and crimes 
of society, that the republic of letters and art, the pre- 
dominantly speculative integral organ of society, as an 
investigating and teaching body, entirely independent of 
the church, co-ordinate with it, and having the peculiar 
function to seek, and to teach, in the First Principle, the 
whole range of the principles, as well of truth or science, 
as of normal practice, or practical morality, has been 
gradually developed from the original germ of the King- 
dom of God. Hence, all the practical integral organs, 
including the church of God, entitled to be called 
catholic, or universal, when free from heresy and sacer- 
dotalism, became bound to adopt from the republic of 
letters and art, and to realize in practice, all their 
respective practical principles. 

It follows that, as all the integral organs of society 
have the same system of laws or principles, derived from 
the First Principle of the Kingdom of God, by the repub- 
lic of letters and art, there can be only one normal order 
of society, constituted by those integral organs and their 
principles. It follows, also, as the Kingdom of God was 
proclaimed by Jesus as a fact, involving the system or 
complex of unalterable laws or principles, which, when 
viewed together, are called the First Principle, and em- 
brace all principles; that the one normal order of society 
constituted by the integral organs of society and their 
respective principles, must also be a fact within the King- 
dom of God, and must be detected in the actual society 
of mankind as its true organization, at work below the 
surface. 



98 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

A conservative analysis, or ideal vivisection of the 
actual society of mankind, therefore, so far as it approxi- 
mates to the Kingdom of God, mnst disclose the true or 
normal organization of that society; and the description 
of that organization will furnish the ideal social consti- 
tution, — as a matter, not of theory, or of imagination, 
but of fact. 

The next chapter will attempt to sketch the actual 
ideal social constitution, stripped of the deformities of 
heathenism still adhering to it, and fitted to regulate the 
perfect universal society of mankind. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

rTIHE Ideal Written Social Constitution,' — being a 
-*- development of the revived, predominantly spec- 
ulative, social side of the Semitic Philosophy. 

57. The artificial constitution, humanly expressed, 
of the Kingdom of God, or of normal society, as mod- 
ern civilization, and as instinctively conceived, will now 
be described; it being so much of the unwritten, instinct- 
ive, rational, ideal, or natural constitution of the King- 
dom of God, or universal society of the races of man- 
kind, as may, when universally assented to, and adopted 
by tacit or express general agreement, be established as 
such in writing. 

All future social progress of mankind can be nothing 
more than the rational realization of the instinctive con- 
ception of the Kingdom of God, as outlined by the 
teaching of Jesus, and based not only on the original 
and continuing social contract of God with man, and 
on the first principle of all science, and of all normal 
practical action, but also on the five elementary and 
universal, individual and social activities of man : 
namely, public education, religious service, industry, 
public charity, and government. 

The following articles, describing from the instinct- 
ive conception of the Kingdom of God, as the ideal 



100 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

of perfect universal society, its actual organization, as 
a real though embryonic fact, by giving both the com- 
mon and the distinctive features of its working integral 
organs, exhibit the outlines of what must hereafter be 
more definitely formulated, by general agreement, as 
the written, universal, social constitution. 

ARTICLE I. 

58. This article will give the common features of 
all the integral organs of society, leaving the details dis- 
tinguishing the organization of each of them, respect- 
ively, to separate succeeding articles. 

Universal society is an association of associations, each 
independent of the rest in all that exclusively concerns 
it; all formed to promote the five elementary and uni- 
versal, individual and social, activities of man; associ- 
ations rising in generality from the primary associations, 
composed of the inhabitants of the lowest territorial 
or local subdivisions of each nation, to associations 
which are national; from these to those which are inter- 
national in each race; and from these to those which 
are Interrace among all the races. 

Each of these associations is five-fold, constituting a 
separate, though numerically identical, association for 
realizing, in a separate capacity, each of the five ele- 
mentary activities. 

The territory of each nation is parceled out into a 
number of primary subdivisions, called districts, or 
neighborhoods, or parishes, of a convenient size to 
enable the inhabitants of each to assemble in a pri- 
mary meeting of its association. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 101 

The organization of the association of each primary 
local district, or neighborhood, must be the meeting 
of all its members, or of those choosing to be present, 
convened at stated times, for each of its capacities; and 
at other times, on due notice; organized according to 
the general parliamentary law; adopting its resolutions 
by a majority vote of those present, to bind as a con- 
tract the whole association; and electing its authorized 
agents, or representatives. 

Each higher association than a primary one, is 
formed for a larger territorial district, and acts by 
means of representatives assembled from such of the 
next lower class of associations as occupy together the 
larger district. Its resolutions bind it as contracts, and 
appoint and authorize its representatives. 

Each nation is divided into at least one intermediate 
class of districts above the primary; with a co-exten- 
sive association for each intermediate district, acting 
by representatives from the lower districts within it, 
and designed to regulate, according to its several capa- 
cities, and in respect to each of the several elementary 
activities, the local concerns of its district, whether a 
city, town, county or other rural area. 

If a nation is divided into larger territorial divisions, 
as states, or provinces, each of these should have a 
central association, acting by representatives from the 
next lower associations within it; and the nation should 
also have a national central association, acting by rep- 
resentatives from the state or provincial central asso- 
ciations. 



102 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

If a nation is not divided into states or provinces, 
or other analogous large sections, it will have a central 
national association acting by representatives from the 
intermediate associations. 

The organization of each association higher than 
the primary is representative, and it is of two kinds, 
called respectively, undenominational and denomina- 
tional. Both of these kinds of organization are distin- 
guished from everything heathen by employing rep- 
resentation as their means of co-operative action, and 
they are distinguished from each other by the dif- 
ferent kinds of representation they use. These two 
kinds of representation may be called generic and 
specific. 

Generic representation is the kind used by the 
undenominational organization; as, when all the rep- 
resentatives of an association are charged to advocate 
its general, undivided or integral interest, without par- 
tiality for any particular denomination of that interest. 

Specific representation is the kind used by the 
denominational organization; as, when some of the 
representatives of an association are charged, respect- 
ively, to advocate specifically one particular denomina- 
tion of its interest, and some, another. There may, 
in different cases, be relatively different degrees of 
generic and specific representation, according to the 
interest represented. 

All the elementary individual and social activities 
are practiced by individuals, and by temporary asso- 
ciations of individuals. But these individuals and 
temporary associations, as members of universal society, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 103 

are entitled not only to have the protection and 
encouragement of the whole community, or society, 
to which they immediately or mediately belong, but 
also to have the helpful guidance of wise general regu- 
lations adopted by universal agreement for the equal 
profit of all; and it is the duty, and should be the 
object, of normal society to afford this equal protec- 
tion and guidance by its highest organization., 

The most general associations of each nation, as well 
as of the race to which it belongs, are the five inte- 
gral organs of society; each designed to promote, in all 
the races, one of the elementary activities, and having 
in each race a thorough national organization, which 
receives authority " from below, " as distinguished from 
the despotic, sacerdotal, and feudal systems, which derive 
their authority "from above." Combining all the local 
associations having its special activity in charge, in 
each nation of the race, every integral organ is, in 
theory and potentially, international and Interrace in 
its scope. 

The complete organization of universal society is the 
co-operation of its integral organs. To effect this co- 
operation each integral organ, besides its fundamental 
organization of lower local associations, must have an 
organization that is superior, or general, and separate 
from the rest; each integral organ being regarded as an 
independent republic. 

The type of the general organization of each integral 
organ, regarded as an independent republic, is the system 
of civil representative democracy, partially realized in 
the general government of the United States of America. 



104 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

For the integral organs other than that of govern- 
ment, however, there will necessarily be some diversities 
from some of the general governmental forms. 

The government, in a military point of view, needs 
a chief execntive officer, a head, a leader, a representa- 
tive of the whole people, and co-ordinate with the legisla- 
tive and the judicial departments. 

The other integral organs need no chief, or leader, 
co-ordinate with the legislature. In each of them its 
highest representative body is its general legislature. 
The highest executive officers in each of them may be a 
small board of executive commissioners, elected for a 
short term of years by the legislature, responsible to 
it, and appointing their subordinates subject to its 
confirmation. 

The general legislature, or the central regulative body, 
of each integral organ must form the head of an ascend- 
ing scale of representative assemblies, delegated respect- 
ively, from its primary, intermediate, state or national 
local associations; each local association determining by 
its representatives the affairs relating exclusively to its 
locality; and leaving to the highest, or general legisla- 
ture of each integral organ, the formulation of those 
general regulations, that relate in common to all its 
members, in the exercise of its particular elementary 
social activity. Each integral organ may have two 
general legislatures, one undenominational, the other 
denominational. 

The general regulations adopted by the general legis- 
latures of each of the integral organs, and by their local 
associations, must, so far as they are positive laws, be 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 105 

morally binding, as public contracts, on all the members, 
respectively,, of the integral organs or other associations 
enacting them; and their enforcement, like that of other 
contracts, must be sought in the courts of the govern- 
ment. Hence, a judicial department in any of the 
integral organs other than the government, would be a 
superfluous piece of machinery. 

The constitution of the Kingdom of God, as perfect 
universal society, being an infinite ideal, open in its 
integral generality and graded development to the in- 
stinctive apprehension of all, the description of all its 
minor details would be as useless at any time as it must 
always be impossible. Only the main features of the 
divine plan, as they have been already in part realized, 
or in the advancing progress of society have come into 
the near prospect of fulfilment, need be outlined. The 
organization of the integral organs of society, as the 
main elements of the Kingdom of God, will now, in 
succession, be separately treated. 

ARTICLE II. 

59. The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Letters and 
Art. 

The elementary activity of this integral organ of 
society, is public education. 

Its means are schools, colleges, universities, public 
lectures, and the press. 

Its modes of action are investigation and teaching. It 
acts by individuals worthily assuming to represent it, 
and by associations. Its highest associations are its two 
general representative assemblies, or legislatures, one of 



106 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

which is undenominational, and the other denomina- 
tional, in each state or nation; and from which, respect- 
ively, delegates or conference committees may be sent 
to some central point to meet similar bodies from the 
other states or nations of the same race, to form similar 
international assemblies or legislatures. 

The subjects of its investigation and teaching are 
language, all the principles of philosophy, of the special 
sciences, and of practice, including the fine and the 
useful arts; all these principles being included in, and 
derived from, the first principle, or the system of 
the laws of nature, or of God. It must particularly 
teach manual training, and the cultivation of a healthy 
body, and practical morality, with whatever else it may 
teach. 

Its general representative undenominational legisla- 
ture will be composed of representatives, themselves 
chosen by representatives of its undenominational, local, 
primary meetings, when assembled in their respective 
local intermediate districts; these local meetings being 
convened to act for the general interest of public educa- 
tion. 

It will enact such regulations as may be necessary to 
direct the general affairs of the various institutions of 
public education it may establish. 

It will also appoint two boards of Commissioners. One 
of these boards would be executive, called general Com- 
missioners of Public Education, whose duty it should be 
to establish, according to instructions prescribed by that 
legislature, a complete system of public education, from 
primary schools to colleges and universities, for teaching 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 107 

all the subjects enumerated before, belonging to liberal 
culture. Acting also under the instructions of that legis- 
lature, local commissioners of public education, elected 
by the people of each locality, will have charge of the 
local schools. 

Teachers should be appointed, according to general 
regulations, during good behavior, after favorable exami- 
nation. The office of commissioner of public education 
should be honorary, and for a short term, subject to 
re-election. 

The other board of commissioners, predominantly 
critical, though partly executive, would be called the 
Commissioners of Public Criticism. The republic of let- 
ters and art being responsible for all seemingly impor- 
tant publications allowed to pass without its dissent, these 
commissioners should be men selected for their eminent 
knowledge, character and skill, and suitably salaried to 
pass deliberate judgment, for the information of the 
public, as the authorized decision of the republic of 
letters and art, on a classified range of the most impor- 
tant current publications of science, literature, art, and 
journalism; separating the good from the worthless, how- 
ever well meant, and reporting their decision to the 
public in a cheap periodical paper. 

They should pay particular attention to the inde- 
pendent, general, or undenominational journals, form- 
Iing the bulk of the reading of the general public, 
and which should furnish, with all the resources of 
condensation, precision, and system, a vivid panoramic 
representation of the present doings for the passing day, 
with occasional retrospects, of all the social activities. 



108 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

All publications should be protected by a general copy- 
right for a certain specified term, or until condemned 
or approved by the commissioners of public criticism; 
and after approval by them a further special copyright 
should be granted for the usual term by the commis- 
sioners, by their certificate specifying their approval of 
such works as they have favorably criticised. The com- 
missioners should certify the works they have unfavor- 
ably criticised or condemned. 

Authors and publishers dissenting from the decisions 
of the commissioners, would be free to appeal to the 
public through the courts, by applying for an injunction 
against reprinting a work improperly condemned by the 
commissioners. 

The general undenominational legislature shall provide 
funds for the payment of salaries and other expenses 
incident to public education, by a small general assess- 
ment, to be limited by the Government, and by receiv- 
ing voluntary contributions. It shall also supervise 
the investments of voluntary endowments of educational 
institutions. 

It shall encourage original investigations, as well as 
teach their results. 

A general representative denominational assembly, or 
legislature, composed of representatives from the various 
associations formed to promote different branches of 
public education, whether scientific, artistic, mechanical, 
moral or religious, may be convened at the instance of 
the undenominational legislature of the republic of let- 
ters and art; or upon the call of any of those associa- 
tions, as the undenominational legislature, by general 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 109 

regulations, may direct; and when convened, it shall 
consider such of the interests or subjects of public edu- 
cation as may be specified in its call, and it shall report 
the result of its deliberations to the undenominational 
legislature, for its action. 

As the normal action of society is a unity, or integral 
whole, of action, the harmony of the combined action, or 
co-operation of all its integral organs; and, similarly, the 
normal action of each integral organ is also, a unity, 
or integral whole, of action; so, accordingly, the normal 
action of the republic of letters and art is an integral 
unit — a consensus of every investigation towards a per- 
fect system of truth derived from the first principle; and 
a corresponding consensus of every effort of teaching 
towards a universal system of liberal public education, 
by the school, the college, the university, and the press, 
and equally independent of the church and the gov- 
ernment. 

But while independent of both, the republic of letters 
and art furnishes for the support of both, all liberal cul- 
ture, the whole system of true principles, and establishes 
on a firm foundation the true value of the Bible, as the 
most ancient charter of human liberty, the sacred repos- 
itory of the rational Truth that makes men free, what- 
ever else it may contain. 

AKTICLE III. 

60. The Republic, or Integral Organ of the Church. 

The elementary activity of this integral organ of 
society, the church, is public religious service. This 
activity serves God by serving man, in leading him into 



110 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

communion with God, teaching him the knowledge of 
God and his true moral and benovolent character. It 
thus renders to man the highest service. By this acti- 
vity, therefore, man, voluntarily and gratefully offering 
himself, and graciously accepted, as God's agent or 
instrument, does a material part of God's work in bless- 
ing man. 

It induces man to think principles as God's specula- 
tive action, or thought, thereby acquiring some of the 
energy of God's thought, as speculative faith; and to 
imitate God in his practical action, or character, thereby 
gaining some of the energy of God's practical action, 
as practical faith. 

It is the immediate communion of man with God 
in public, without the necessary intervention of any per- 
son pretending to be an official mediator, but with the 
aid of all present, sympathizing fellow-men, and espe- 
cially of ministers chosen by the people, or congrega- 
tion, to lead in prayer, and teach the knowledge of 
God's character. This, when followed by subsequent 
exemplary conduct, is true public religious service. It 
does service to God, because it helps him to benefit 
man. 

The religious experience, called by the Quakers the 
Inner Light and the Inward Monitor, and some mystic 
declarations of other sects, may be rationally explained 
as the true knowledge of God, derived from the First 
Principle, by means of the sensuous ideas and the opera- 
tions of instinctive thought, independent of language. 

The means of effecting communion with God, is 
prayer; the association with others in pursuit of it, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

or public religious worship; the aid of the arts; and 
especially full instruction as to God's character, derived 
from its manifestation in the princij)les of nature, in 
the events of history, and in his common providential 
dealings with the individual man. Of the arts, in 
respect to religion, poetry and music, as spiritual, are 
the chief; to which architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
ing contribute their aid. 

The republic of the church consists of all the peo- 
ple, and it embraces all the religious denominations not 
heathen in their dogmas or practices. Eeligious denomi- 
nations in all their relations to the general church, are 
somewhat analogous to the political parties of the gov- 
ernment, in that they are separated from each other by 
differences of opinion, and that they jointly constitute 
the whole people, the whole church — all uniting in 
holding the same ultimate principles, notwithstanding 
their disagreement in matters of indifference. 

The general undenominational representative assem- 
bly, or legislature, of the church, for a state or nation, 
consists of representatives from the undenominational 
assemblies of its local associations. It regulates, in 
general, the elementary activity, the religious service, of 
the church, in essential points. 

It is analagous to other legislatures, because it is 
a deliberative body designed for a free expression of 
opinions, with a view to agreement in some resolution 
declaratory of the truth, or in some decision in a matter 
of practice. But it differs materially from other legis- 
latures in several important particulars. 



112 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

First, it has no political power. It cannot, therefore, 
use governmental modes of coercion to enforce con- 
formity with its opinions, or to punish disagreement with 
them. Nor can it, as a Christian body, use any of the 
well-known so-called spiritual methods of enforcement, 
which are heathen modes of superstition and idolatry, 
pretending to engage and enlist the wrath of an idol 
god to vindicate the heathen dictates of a sacerdotal 
order. 

Secondly, the subjects of its deliberation and action are 
truly spiritual, as distinguished from temporal, and espe- 
cially from all outward matters of the State, whether 
industrial or governmental, or even of public charity. It 
may properly discuss the means by which communion 
with God in public or in private is effected, with a view 
to improve them all. But public religion, or the public 
service of God, is its general subject. Private or indi- 
vidual religion, indeed, underlies and supports all nor- 
mal life, as life is one consistent and integral whole, 
guided by the one First Principle that involves the prin- 
ciples of private or individual religion, with all other 
principles. And man, as an individual, can only live a 
normal life and serve God as he serves man. The ways, 
therefore, in which man can serve his fellow-man, and 
thereby exercise his religion as an individual, are very 
numerous. But the chief outward manifestation of his 
religion, and the one mainly committed to the charge of 
the church, is the public service^of God, the public exhi- 
bition and teaching of the true character of God, as the 
just, wise, and loving Father of mankind; for the public 
encouragement of man by association, prayer, example, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 113 

and instruction, superinduced upon enlightenment and 
liberal culture, to commune with him, and follow his 
example in private as well as in public. 

Hence, the deliberations of the church in its unde- 
nominational legislatures, or councils, while aiming at 
agreement in essential religious truth, must be spiritual, 
and will charitably recognize freedom of thought and 
toleration of differing opinions and usages. The councils 
of the church, therefore, will abstain from formulating 
any authoritative creed; but will call on all men to find 
and to follow all the truth of God. They will, to the 
best of their ability, confute, with charity, all funda- 
mental error; and will avoid the heathen practice of 
stigmatizing error as punishable or damnable heresy; 
but will prescribe for all error, as its only rational and 
religious human remedy, cogent argument and wise in- 
struction, leaving all further remedy to the example and 
discipline of God. 

When required, an interstate or an international un- 
denominational legislature, or council of the church, 
may be formed, by sending representatives from its state 
or national undenominational legislatures, to meet at 
some central point. 

The general undenominational legislature, or council 
of the church, may appoint Executive Commissioners to 
bring the resolutions of the council to the general knowl- 
edge of the people; to promote Sunday schools, as unde- 
nominational as practicable, in the various churches; and 
to send efficient and liberal undenominational missions 
to the heathen world, at home and abroad. 



114 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

There may be convened a denominational representa- 
tive general assembly, or legislature, of the church, as 
a denominational council, composed of representatives 
from all the religious denominations, as such, as far as 
possible, to exhibit and discuss from time to time, in a 
charitable way, the actual characteristics or differences 
of all the religious denominations, while carefully noting 
their points of agreement, and in those points of agree- 
ment making a joint search for any common elements 
of ancient heathenism, or monotheistic idolatry, as op- 
posed to the simple and pure rational Christianity. 

The union, at least of the Christian religious denomi- 
nations, in Christian charity, the lowest degree of which 
is toleration, must precede, and would probably produce, 
the general reformation of all the monotheistic religious 
denominations, — a movement which would be first of all 
the extirpation of all the roots of ancient heathenism and 
monotheistic idolatry; for only after these are removed, 
will the truth of God have free course and unimpeded 
growth. 

The republic, or integral organ, of the church, in 
its normal action, is unquestionably an integral unity 
of all its . denominations, — the one catholic church of the 
one true God. For all its various religious denomina- 
tions, normally seeking the knowledge of the true char- 
acter of God, with a view to its faithful imitation in 
public religious service and in private life, as their only 
essential objects; while each questions its own denomi- 
national peculiarities, resolved to dismiss from its doc- 
trine and its practice, or ceremonial, every vestige and 
reminiscence of ancient heathenism; the Roman Catholic, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 115 

the Greek Catholic, and the English Catholic, looking 
narrowly to what is distinctly Koman, Greek, and Eng- 
lish, respectively, in their religious systems; and the 
other denominations examining closely that which in 
their doctrine and practice is rather peculiar than essen- 
tial, — must seriously ask themselves whether their denomi- 
national peculiarities, even if abstractly true in doctrine 
and formally correct in practice, as understood by them- 
selves, have not become, by their overestimate and their 
unnecessary obtrusion, mere unduly magnified accidental 
departures from true catholicity; but are easily harmo- 
nized and freed from every mark of monotheistic idolatry, 
by a return to the simplicity of pure, catholic, original 
Christianity. 

AETICLE IV. 

81. The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Industry. 

The elementary activity of this integral organ of 
society, is industry, a term the meaning of which ex- 
pands with the advance of society, and which may be 
regarded now as comprehending the production, ex- 
change, transportation, distribution, and the redistribu- 
tion of natural and artificial values, and as including the 
regulated partial consumption, or use, and the residuary 
savings of them. 

The means by which the elementary activity of 
industry is carried on, are partly material, and partly 
spiritual. Its material means are the material gifts of 
nature, and material capital, both fixed and circulating. 
Its spiritual means are its spiritual capital, as free labor, 
skill, science, credit, and the so-called forces of nature, 
with language and the arts. 



116 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The modes of action, or the operations, of the ele- 
mentary activity of industry, are extremely various and 
complicated; but they may be collected, for discussion, 
into four groups, represented by the action of the four 
industrial classes, — the employers, the working-men, the 
consumers, and the capitalists. 

While it is necessary to consider each of these groups 
separately, it should be observed that they are, in theory, 
integral parts of one whole of industry; all tending, in 
practice, with the progress of society, to have identical 
interests, with diversified advantages, as the same indi- 
vidual person may belong to all these classes at the same 
time. For, when industry is properly organized, the 
working-man will be not only, to a fair extent, a con- 
sumer, but also, according to his skill and prudence, a 
capitalist, and thereby potentially, if not actually, an 
employer. 

The industrial classes, constituting the whole people, 
may all be traced to the working-men. Indeed, when 
it is considered that material capital can only be utilized 
in the operations of industry by means of spiritual 
capital, which is entirely within the reach of all work- 
ing-men by diligence and good conduct; and that the con- 
trolling elements of spiritual capital, expressed by the 
term credit, are daily seen to elevate working-men to the 
class of employers, entrusted with the use of material 
capital by its owners, and enabled thereby to acquire 
material capital, in the form of profit; it is manifest that 
in a normal system of industry, when the government 
ceases to interfere with it, and the other integral organs 
co-operate with it, especially the republic of letters and 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 117 

art, by furnishing to all a liberal education, and the 
republic of the church, by stimulating in all the religious 
and the moral impulses, there will be offered for every 
one, according to his skill and perseverance, a free and 
open career, to pass upward from the lowest to the 
highest employments of industry. 

To a careful observer a constant series of changes in 
the ranks of industry will appear, even now, to take 
place with spectacular interest; as in a drama, in which 
an actor enters the first scene as a serving man, and in 
the crisis of the plot throws off his humble disguise and 
assumes the character of a distinguished personage; or 
as in a circus, when a horse gallops around faster and 
faster, like fleeting fortune, and no rider is seen; but 
suddenly a person from among the audience, muffled in 
coarse clothing like a plain working-man, stumbles into 
the ring, is helped upon the horse, and sways un- 
steadily in his seat, seeming ready every moment to fall; 
but at length becomes steady, shows a level head, starts 
to his feet on the saddle, throws off disguise after dis- 
guise, appears more and more richly dressed, as if 
rising in life, until at last he bursts upon the startled 
and admiring audience in all the glory of spangles and 
embroidery, — a glittering, full-blown capitalist. 

The alleged conflict of labor and capital is absurd. 
For labor is spiritual capital, and is daily converted 
into material capital. After the primary distribution 
of the productions of industry, wages representing the 
share of the workingman, the relative consumption by 
the distributees of their respective shares determines 
the possession of material capital. Those distributees 



118 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

who consume less than they receive,, and save the surplus, 
have this, as material capital, in their hands. 

The beginnings of material capital are always in the 
hands of free working-men, who receive wages; as the 
highest honors of government, of the church, of science 
and art, may often be traced to the same origin. From 
small beginnings material capital, increasing sometimes 
slowly, sometimes rapidly, produces by economy and 
enterprise wonderful results. Working-men bent on 
accumulation and endowed with energy, prudence, and 
patience, see and utilize the constantly recurring but 
rapidly passing opportunities of business, adding success 
to success, now by inventions, now by investments, and 
now by prudent and skilful management of affairs 

It is by the saving of material capital, year after year, 
that wages are paid; and that the wonderful system of 
reproduction of industrial values, including material 
capital, is carried on. For, if the saving of material 
capital by working-men and employers were to cease, and 
every man were to consume all that he received in the 
distribution of industrial products, the material capital 
already accumulated would soon be exhausted, and 
the industrial business of the world would stand still. 
The only general occupations left to mankind would be 
hunting and war; war for the few wild vines and fruit 
trees found scattered in the woods, and for the hunt- 
ing-grounds that would occupy the fields of present 
cultivation. 

The division of labor caused by the great variety of 
industrial occupations, when a free interchange of their 
productions, by means of money and of commerce, is 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 119 

allowed, necessarily conduces, when these occupations are 
supported by educated intelligence and religion, not only 
to the present, but also to the ultimate harmony and 
prosperity of them all; both by encouraging the separate 
organization of the industrial classes, and by facilitating 
the saving of material capital. 

It is evidently proper that all the industrial classes 
should be carefully organized. Labor is partially organ- 
ized, and it is desirable that organized labor should be 
able to meet and to consult with organized capital, 
organized employers, and organized consumers. For 
this purpose, it is necessary that the organization of each 
of the industrial classes should be carried to practical 
completeness. 

The organization of labor, or of the class of working- 
men is defective. It is founded too much on military tac- 
tics, on compulsion, on the excessive use of self-help, 
which in a community governed by law should only be 
resorted to in a case of the last necessity, and on the 
imagined force of its erroneously supposed superiority of 
numbers; forgetting that every working-man is also a 
consumer, and in respect to spiritual capital, if not also 
to material capital, is likewise a capitalist. It lacks an 
institution that will enable large bodies of its members 
to enter, backed by strong financial influence, into busi- 
ness relations with employers, for well-considered and 
lasting mutual benefit. Such an institution is the labor 
bank, in which the labor and the savings of a consider- 
able number of working-men and working-women, as its 
members, under suitable regulations, may be pooled; so 
that the bank, by its officers, may make contracts for 



120 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

its labor of different grades, with a guaranty against 
strikes, taking adequate security, and insuring the pay- 
ment of wages to its members; while, as a savings bank, 
on strict business principles, it would loan its funds, 
by preference, to judicious and liberal employers. 

The labor banks, if prudently managed, would prob- 
ably take the place of the present savings banks, and 
would give the working-men an influential and peace- 
making standing among capitalists and employers. 

But the present labor associations, though they may 
still have a legitimate use, whether they are called trades 
unions, knights of labor, or otherwise, seem to chiefly 
confine their attention to the most obvious interests of 
working-men, in respect to wages and the hours of labor; 
while they neglect their less obvious, but equally import- 
ant, interest in the peace and harmony of all the indus- 
trial classes. Of what advantage, however, are high wages 
and few hours of labor, when gained by irritating threats 
and expensive strikes, if thereby a universal, cruel, and 
vindictive industrial war among the leaders and repre- 
sentatives of all the industrial classes is kept up; leading 
to stoppages, disasters, and panics in trade, which fre- 
quently throw many thousands of working-men and 
working-women, and in the course of a few years, even 
millions, out of all employment for months, and out of 
steady employment for years? 

In normal society, in which the integral organs are 
separately organized, there will be a science of industrial 
economy, showing the organization of industry and its 
proper modes of action; but because there will be no 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 121 

interference of government with industry, there can be 
no science of political economy. 

Nothing can be more inconsistent with industrial 
economy than the plan of some working-men, who, in their 
rash quarrel with material capital, propose to vest all pro- 
perty, including all material capital, in the government. 
For this measure would necessitate the extreme central- 
ization of the government, with an unavoidably absolute 
central ruling body, like Plato's supreme council of 
philosophers; and would, by excluding all competition 
of capitalists, create a practically despotic monopoly of 
material capital, under the management of that ruling 
body, who would be the only employers, and whom all 
working-men and working-women would be compelled, by 
the whole power of the government, without resistance 
or complaint, to serve. 

Although in normal society there could be no inten- 
tional interference of the government with industry, the 
right of the government to raise its revenues, in whole 
or in part, by duties on imported goods, can not be 
denied. But the integral organ of industry would have 
an equal right to insist on there being appended to the 
tariff of import duties a proviso, that, (i when it shall be 
made to appear by a consular certificate in the form 
prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, or by law, 
that any articles in the list of imports are produced 
abroad by labor for which wages are paid equivalent to 
the wages paid in the United States of America for 
similar labor, these articles shall only pay a rate of 
import duty, say, twenty-five per cent, less than the 
regular rate of import duty charged upon such articles 



122 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

in said tariff." Such a proviso, which could be im- 
proved by a sliding scale of duties, rising with low 
wages, and falling with high wages, paid abroad on the 
production of the imported goods, would tend to pro- 
duce among nations that equalization of fair wages, and 
reciprocity of beneficial commerce, which are the con- 
ditions of rational free trade. 

The undenominational general representative assem- 
bly, or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of 
industry — for a state or nation — must consist of repre- 
sentatives chosen by the intermediate undenominational 
associations indiscriminately from all the general indus- 
trial classes. 

It may enact general industrial regulations, which 
may be called general industrial positive laws, or public 
industrial contracts; appoint Executive Industrial Com- 
missioners, for collecting and distributing useful indus- 
trial statistics; for awarding limited privileges, by letters 
patent, to inventors of useful industrial contrivances or 
combinations; for granting charters to incorporate in- 
dustrial corporations; for exercising supervision and 
control over industrial corporations of a public nature, 
and for receiving and disbursing whatever revenue it 
may control. 

There may be, for a state or a nation, a general 
denominational legislature of industry, consisting of two 
branches, elected at different times. Its members will 
be representatives, respectively, of the four fundamental 
industrial classes. As these classes are integral, and 
to some extent interpenetrate each other, and the class 
of consumers actually contains all the other classes, one 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 123 

branch of the denominational legislature may be com- 
posed exclusively of representatives of the consumers, 
and may be elected by the intermediate local associations 
convened to act undenominationally for all the classes 
of industry. 

The other branch of the denominational legislature 
of industry may consist of an equal number of repre- 
sentatives, unless another proportion can be agreed on, 
for each of the other three industrial classes, — working- 
men, employers, and capitalists, — and elected from the 
respective associations or corporations belonging to them. 
Perhaps the most practical way to elect separate repre- 
sentatives for these three classes, would be to let the 
elections be made by the regularly organized and com- 
bined associations of each class, respectively, say, by 
organized labor, by organized capital, and by the 
organized employers. 

In this way, there would be assembled in both 
branches of. the general denominational legislature of 
industry, an adequate number of recognized representa- 
tives of each fundamental industrial class; and their 
points of difference and points of agreement would be 
clearly brought out for rational deliberation by intelli- 
gent discussion. 

The general denominational legislature of industry 
will settle by its resolutions the temporary general differ- 
ences among the industrial classes; adjust a standard 
scale of wages and of hours of labor, as a practical basis 
for private contracts on the subject, while leaving all 
fair private contracts free; and appoint an advisory 
board to recommend temporary modifications of this 



124 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

scale, when they are required by changes of general 
economical circumstances. 

It is probable that the discussions of the two branches 
of the general denominational industrial legislature, by 
demonstrating the truth of the principle, that in the 
long run, and in a large view, the interests of the four 
industrial classes are identical, would stop the industrial 
war now raging throughout the civilized world, and 
establish universal industrial peace. 

It is not difficult to prove that it is the true interest 
of the consumer to pay a fair price for a good article; 
for this price will return to the consumer, who is a 
working-man, fair wages, and it will leave to the con- 
sumer, who is an employer, a fair profit; and it will 
yield to the consumer, who is a capitalist, a fair rate of 
interest. Again, fair wages, with a due regard to the 
hours of labor, are plainly the highest that can be paid 
consistently with the security and maintenance of capital, 
and it is as clearly the true interest of the working-men, 
with a view to preserving the source of wages, to receive 
no more, as it is the true policy of employers and capital- 
ists, in order to keep up the consuming power of the 
working-men, from whom a large part of their profits 
is derived, to pay no less. 

The republic, or integral organ, of industry, there- 
fore, in its normal action, is a unity, an integral whole 
of action; the true permanent interests of all its mem- 
bers, its consumers, employers, working-men, and capital- 
ists, in a system of intelligent harmony, and rationally 
organized industrial peace, being virtually the same. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 125 

ARTICLE V. 

62. The Kepublic, or Integral Organ, of Public 
Charity. 

The elementary activity of the republic, or integral 
organ, of public charity, is the public-spirited helping- 
love of the people. It aims to remedy the deficiency of 
the action of each of the other four integral organs of 
society, and also to cure the evils common to them all. 

Its means, besides its own action, are charitable gifts 
entrusted to it. 

Its action, being public, is effected by associations, 
some of which are local, and others are confined to no 
locality. Hence, to accomplish its general aims, there 
have been developed in it five general groups or classes 
of charitable and benevolent associations. 

One group of charitable associations supplements the 
general action of the republic of letters and art, by 
extending the benefits of education to the decrepit, the 
idiotic, the deaf and dumb, the blind, the incurably sick, 
whom the general system of public education does not 

I effectually reach. 
Another group of charitable associations ekes out the 
general action of the church by extending the benefits 
of its religious service to persons to whom the ordinary 
ministrations of the church do not extend, — the sick, 
the prisoner, the outcast, the dweller in thinly settled 
neighborhoods, the heathen. 
Another group of charitable associations aids the 
deficencies in the ordinary working of the republic of 
industry; alleviates by generous contributions the calami- 



126 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

ments to the industrious poor, caused by unforeseen 
changes of trade, and by new applications of machinery; 
and seeks to protect working-men, working-women, and 
working children from excessive hours and unwholesome 
conditions of labor, and from labor at too early an age; 
and to preserve for them every week a day, and some- 
what more, of rest. 

Another group of charitable associations superadds 
its action to the government's dealing with crime; aids 
in deserving cases the defense of the accused, counsels 
with humanity the condemned, seeks to convert their 
punishment into means for their reform, and, after 
the term of their punishment expires, leads them with 
generous sympathy and needed assistance into honest 
courses of life. 

The remaining group of charitable associations re- 
lieves the infirmities of immorality common, more or 
less, to all the integral organs, by promoting moral 
reforms; humanizes, refines, and elevates the modes of 
intercourse among the individuals and the collective 
members of society, by providing cheap, aesthetic public 
entertainments of high art. 

The undenominational general representative assem- 
bly, or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of 
public charity, must consist of representatives chosen 
by the intermediate undenominational associations, con- 
vened to consider the general interests of public charity. 

Its duty will be to collect and distribute statistics 
of public charity; to issue general advisory regulations 
on the subject, and to appoint a board of Executive 
Commissioners of Public Charity. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 127 

The duties of the executive commissioners of public 
charity would be, to examine and report, from time to 
time, the condition of all permanent charitable invest- 
ments; to furnish practicable plans for all extensive 
charitable enterprises, when required by those having 
them in charge; and to make, under the direction of 
the associations engaged in the promotion of moral 
reforms, and of refined social intercourse, all the neces- 
sary arrangements for cheap, sesthetic public entertain- 
ments or amusements, by means of literary lectures, and 
of displays of high art in theatrical performances, and 
in other exhibitions, easily accessible to the masses of 
the people. 

The denominational general representative assembly, 
or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of 
public charity, must be composed of representatives, 
elected as far as possible from all the general groups, 
orders or classes of charitable associations, and associa- 
tions specially designed to promote moral reforms. 

Its duty will be to harmonize by its deliberations the 
action of the various groups of associations engaged in 
charitable and reformatory work; and to furnish statis- 
tics and suggestions for general regulations to the un- 
denominational legislature of the republic, or integral 
organ, of public charity. 

Evidently, there may be an international and an 
Interrace organization of public charity, as well as of 
the other integral organs of society. 

But charity, being as universal, and as ever present, 
as humanity, need not wait for the formation of inter- 
national or Interrace charitable associations, in order 



128 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

to extend its help from one nation to another nation of 
the same or of another race. A national association, 
therefore, of the white race, in the United States of 
America, can properly perform an act of Interrace charity 
by assisting with money and counsel the negro nation 
sojourning there to emigrate to its natural habitat and 
providential home in Central Africa. 

Similarly, acts of Interrace charity, though of a dif- 
ferent kind, are performed by national associations of 
the white race in the United States of America to the 
Indian race now there. 

In its normal action, the republic, or integral 
of public charity, is a unity, or integral whole of action, 
supplementing and rounding up the action of all the 
other integral organs, with itself, into a consistent whole, 
by its public-spirited helping love. 

AETICLE VI. 

63. The Kepublic, or Integral Organ, of Government. 

The elementary activity of the republic, or integral 
organ of government, is to defend and secure the public 
peace, to preserve domestic tranquillity and harmony, 
to prevent and detect crime, to punish criminals, and 
to administer the law in litigated cases. 

Its means are the wealth of the nation levied by taxa- 
tion; the physical force of the nation organized as a 
police, militia and navy; the enactment of general gov- 
ernmental positive laws, and the establishment of courts 
of justice. 

The modes of action of the elementary activity of 
government, may be gathered into four groups, repre- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 129 

sented by the action of the four partial organs of gov- 
ernment, which are : its Political Parties, its Govern- 
mental Legislature, its body of Executive officers, and its 
Legal Profession, divided into an Official or Judicial 
branch, and a Lay, or practicing branch. 

The limited sphere of the modes of action of the 
government, as indicated by the above enumeration of 
its partial organs, will be best understood by considering 
that the government, which in the system of ancient 
heathenism, or Orientalism, now superseded by Chris- 
tianity, contained all the functions of society, has been 
gradually emptied of the functions properly belonging 
to the republic of letters and art, to the republic of 
the church, to the republic of industry, and to the 
republic of public charity; and that it now retains 
only the functions strictly pertaining to normal gov- 
ernment. 

The progress heretofore made in divesting the gov- 
ernment of the functions which, in its ancient heathen 
or Oriental form, it had usurped from the other integral 
organs of society, leads to the inference that the govern- 
ment, even as now constituted, will be considered in 
the future as either the needless duplicate, or the non- 
essential auxiliary of the other integral organs; either 
arbitrarily taking up the functions which they volun- 
tarily or by force abandon, or discretionally aiding 
functions which they inefficiently exercise. Hence, it 
seems probable, that if the other integral organs will 
act intelligently and energetically in discharging their 
proper functions, the government will be still further 
simplified. 



130 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Indeed, when, by systematic public education, the 
republic of letters and art endows the community with 
liberal culture in the principles of physical, moral, 
religious and aesthetic science; when the republic of the 
church exercises the people in true religious service, 
that leads them to imitate God's true character; when 
the republic of industry conducts its industrial affairs 
on a system of wise and equitable principles, doing exact 
justice to every industrial class; and when the republic 
of public charity refines and humanizes the masses of 
men in their intercourse with each other, and ennobles 
them by moral reforms, it is evident that nothing will 
remain for the government to do. 

It is true that, owing to the unconscious color- 
blindness of the reforming as well as of the conservative 
chiefs of society, preventing them from recognizing 
and following the one faithfully leading light of the 
world, to the Kingdom of God, society may never on 
earth arrive at this ideal condition; but that it may 
approximate it here, with a continued simplification of 
the government, is not an irrational supposition. The 
mere practical adoption of industrial principles, that 
would stay the present universal industrial war; and of 
legal principles that would abolish the present system 
of offensive and conquering political war; to say nothing 
of a general, rational, religious reformation, would be 
a long step towards this desirable consummation. 

The nature, the duties, and the organization, respect- 
ively, of the partial organs of the integral organ of gov- 
ernment, will now be briefly stated. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 131 

64. The government's Political Parties, as distin- 
guished from factions, or rings, and from the supporters 
of rings, are honorable associations of independent voters, 
acting with deliberate, instinctive thought, on all avail- 
able information, and with the observance of all per- 
tinent principles, for the practical determination of the 
current governmental questions of the day. They de- 
serve a place in the written constitution of every state 
and nation. 

Each political party acts collectively by nominating 
and voting for representatives of its party for the ordi- 
nary governmental legislature, and also for the leading 
executive officers of the government. The political par- 
ties together constitute the whole people, and each pro- 
fesses to act for the general welfare. They diifer, not on 
principles, because these are common to all the people; 
but on practical measures, involving the application of 
these principles. 

The organization of each political party is formed 
by assembling in central points in the intermediate dis- 
tricts, respectively, representatives from primary local 
meetings of its members in each of the primary terri- 
torial districts, and so on. The representative meetings 
of each political party nominate its candidates for the 
ordinary governmental legislature, and for the leading 
executive officers of the government; and the members 
of the party afterwards vote for these candidates in the 
general elections of the people. 

Political parties are sometimes local, and sometimes 
general, or national, according to the scope of the issues 
or questions which they maintain. Individuals belonging 



132 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

to the same party on national questions, may belong to 
different parties on municipal questions. 

The proper organization of political parties requires 
the erection in each primary district, or neighborhood, 
of neighborhood houses, with central houses in the in- 
termediate districts, and in central points of each state 
or nation, arranged with a convenient number of apart- 
ments; so that the members of each party may meet sepa- 
rately, either on the same or on different days, to become 
acquainted, and to consult with each other on public 
questions. And there may be a room where all parties, 
if they choose, may meet together. 

These neighborhood houses, and the central houses 
connected with them, may be so arranged as to 
accommodate, for some purposes, by courtesy, all the 
integral organs; and the accommodations they require 
will suggest a new order of public architecture. But, 
as they would be primarily intended to promote the 
proper action of political parties, they should be con- 
structed by the national and local governments. 

By this arrangement for friendly and frequent con- 
sultation, the masses of each political party may become 
personally known to each other in the primary districts, 
and come to the general election well informed as to all 
political questions and political movements, and well 
prepared, without dictation from any ring, and without 
undue influence from any quarter, to vote upon them 
understandingly. In this way may be secured, for 
every political party, the advantages which the local 
Demes, introduced by Clisthenes into Athens, gave to 
the Athenian democracy in its most glorious days. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 133 

An important precaution to secure spontaneity of 
action and free deliberation in the nomination of can- 
didates for election, would be to require all ballots or 
tickets voted for this purpose in the primary meetings of 
political parties, as well as in nominating conventions, 
to be written by those who cast them. 

Old political parties will be dissolved, and new parties 
formed, as old practical questions are settled, and new 
practical questions arise; thus keeping up a healthy 
current of popular political life, in changing practical 
political parties, according to the practical exigencies 
of the times, while the same fundamental principles, 
held by them all, live on forever. For a political party 
can no more have peculiar principles to act by, than it 
can have peculiar sunshine to bask in, or peculiar air to 
breathe. 

Political parties should pay their own necessary 
expenses, by a small voluntary contribution from each 
member, as does every other honorable association that 
pursues an object of common interest to all its members. 
To preserve equality among their members, they should 
not allow the payment of any contribution above a low 
measure, to be fixed from time to time, say one dollar 
from any one person. 

Hence, a political party, as an honorable association 
of equal members, cannot tax its candidates, or the 
holders or expectants of public offices, higher than its 
other members. For a higher tax implies that the 
public offices are not primarily held for the benefit of 
the public, but of a ring, by whom the tax is impudently 



134 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

imposed, or more impudently assumed, as an investment 
to be repaid, with profit, by public offices or jobs. 

65. The government's regular, or denominational 
legislature consists of representatives elected, in fact, by 
the people in general, but virtually delegated by the 
political parties by whom they were nominated. Its 
sphere, according to the territory it represents, will be 
national or local. 

Its action should be confined to what is strictly gov- 
ernmental. Its business should be divided into two 
classes: one class, being temporary matters of govern- 
mental business, relating chiefly to the taxes, their dis- 
bursement, and necessary loans; the other class, being 
general governmental positive laws. The first class 
should chiefly occupy the legislature's time. The other 
class, the general positive laws, should only receive 
additions or amendments at long intervals, and only 
when demanded by urgent necessity, after full delib- 
eration, to keep pace with the development of principles. 

The organization of the legislature should be either 
in two co-ordinate bodies elected for different terms, or 
in one body with members elected for different terms; so 
that at every session it would receive new members, to 
succeed those whose terms had expired. It should have 
the usual standing committees, and such special com- 
mittees, and joint conference committees, as its business 
demands. It should also adopt for its guidance par- 
liamentary rules, framed to secure the deliberate dis- 
patch of business. Its sessions should be frequent, and 
if annual, should be short. 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 135 

Its enactments should require the concurrence of the 
chief executive officer of the territorial sphere, or locality 
represented by it, if he is elected by the people; but they 
could be passed, notwithstanding his objections, by the 
votes of two-thirds of the legislature, if it is one body; or 
of each of its bodies, if it is composed of two branches. 

It is proper, also, that the concurrence of the legis- 
lature, or of one branch of it, should be required to 
ratify some special action of the chief executive officer, 
co-ordinate with it, such as, in general, the appointment 
of a few executive and judicial officers; or in regard to 
the action of the chief executive officer of a nation, in 
the conclusion of treaties with foreign nations. 

Besides the general governmental legislature of a 
nation, there will be corresponding subordinate legis- 
latures for each of its states or provinces, and further 
subordinate legislatures for its municipalities, and its 
intermediate districts; each of these legislatures being 
limited in its sphere of action to the governmental in- 
terests exclusively affecting the locality it represents. 

International, or even Interrace, governmental legisla- 
tures, if, in the distant future, they should come to be 
required, could be easily organized, according to the 
principles of civil representative democracy, and of in- 
ternational and Interrace law. 

66. The body of Executive officers of a national gov- 
ernment should consist of a chief executive, or presi- 
dent, elected by the whole people, and of different grades 
of subordinate executive officers, appointed directly or 
indirectly by him, both for the civil and for the military 
service, including the army and navy. 



136 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Corresponding also to the series of subordinate gov- 
ernmental legislatures, for states, provinces, municipal- 
ities, and intermediate districts, there are sets of chief 
and subordinate executive officers, respectively, for each 
legislature; but, as they are in many respects analogous 
to the set belonging to the general government of a 
nation, nothing further need here be said of them, 
except that the local chief executive officers mainly 
control the local police; while the chief executive offi- 
cer of the nation commands the national militia and 
the navy. 

Besides the chief executive officer of the national gov- 
ernment, there must be, under him, for the civil service 
two principal classes of subordinate executive officers; 
one class being leading executive officers, the other class 
being ministerial executive officers. 

Of the military and naval service it is only necessary 
to say that it is subject to the ordinary military rules, 
and is subordinate to the civil power. 

The duties of the whole body of the executive officers 
of the civil service of the nation are as follows: It is 
the duty of the chief executive officer to superintend 
generally the execution of the leading measures of the 
government as devised by the legislature and prescribed 
by the laws; it is the duty of the leading subordinate 
executive officers to plan and practically direct, under the 
supervision of their chief, the execution of these meas- 
ures; and it is the duty of the ministerial subordinate 
class of executive officers, to specifically execute the 
details of these measures under the orders of the leading 
class. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 137 

Then, among the class of ministerial subordinate 
executive officers, who in a populous nation must be very 
numerous, there must be a few confidential officers, 
known to the leading officers, and trusted by them, to 
have general charge, as chiefs of bureaus, or foremen, 
over particular spheres of executive work. 

The chief executive officer must be directly respon- 
sible for his immediate subordinates, the leading subor- 
dinate executive officers; one of whom should be the 
legal counsellor of the executive branch of the govern- 
ment, while the others are the heads of the various other 
executive departments; and they should each, respect- 
ively, be directly responsible for the ministerial execu- 
tive officers subordinate to them, especially for those 
designated as confidential. The chief executive officer, 
therefore, should appoint the leading subordinate execu- 
tive officers; but he may be required to report their 
names for confirmation to the legislature, or one branch 
of it; and the legislative body to whom they are reported 
shall be considered as confirming them, unless it objects 
to them by a two-thirds vote, within a week from his 
report. The leading executive officer at the head of 
each department, shall appoint the confidential minis- 
terial officers belonging to his department, subject to the 
approval of the chief executive officer. 

The remaining mass of subordinate ministerial execu- 
tive officers below the confidential class, should be re- 
garded as a standing body of public servants, like the 
privates and lower officers of the army and navy. They 
should be so organized, and the affairs of the govern- 
ment should be so simplified, by discarding from it all 



138 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

matters not strictly governmental — as, for instance, the 
post-office, which is the proper business of an express 
company — that their number could be reduced to the 
actual wants of the government; and their compen- 
sation should be made equal to that paid in private life 
for such services as they perform. 

They should be appointed only after a successful ex- 
amination, and their removal should be made only by 
the head of their department, and for inefficiency, negli- 
gence, or misconduct only. 

Any vacancy among them should be filled, from the 
number of qualified applicants, by the head of the de- 
partment in which it occurs. 

A proper commission should conduct the examination 
of applicants, and report it, with their age, which, if 
mature, should not alone exclude them; and the same 
commission should hear appeals from those who are 
removed. But an appeal from the decision of the com- 
mission may be taken to the chief executive officer by 
the head of the department making the removal. 

In this way the influence of political parties will be 
confined to its legitimate sphere, the chief executive 
office, the leading subordinate executive offices, and the 
confidential subordinate ministerial executive offices. 
Otherwise there is an obvious danger that, if political 
parties allow their respective organizations to enter into 
a rivalry with each other, to obtain the numerous minor 
offices of the government, and if they give a license to 
the rapacity of their officious, brawling partisans to 
claim them as rewards for pretended services to their 
party, rewards won by them either as spoils of a mere- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 139 

tricious victory, or as prizes in a game of trickery and 
fraud, political parties will be degraded from honorable 
associations, inspired by generous, patriotic principles, 
into dishonorable, selfish factions. 

67.. The Legal Profession is a voluntary association, 
the admission to which is regulated by law, subject to 
a prescribed examination as to the professional or legal 
knowledge, and the moral character, of the applicant. 
It is divided into two branches; the official or judicial 
branch, and the lay or practicing branch. Its object 
is to render service in the administration of justice. 

The official or judicial branch are the judges of the 
courts, and the official legal advisers and representatives 
of the government, taken from the lay or practicing 
branch. The lay or practicing branch is composed of 
the rest of the legal profession. 

The duty of the courts, as the judicial branch of the 
legal profession, or the judicial department of the gov- 
ernment, is to decide litigated cases according to the 
law; with the help, in criminal cases, of a legal prosecu- 
tor representing the government, in fairness, and of a 
practicing lawyer representing the accused, in just de- 
fense;" and with the aid, in civil cases, of practicing 
lawyers, on both sides. 

The duty of both branches of the legal profession is 
to maintain, in their expressed opinions, and in all their 
other legal acts, the supremacy of the law. To this end 
they should study law as a science, based on the phil- 
osophy of law, and elucidated by modern historical re- 
searches into the remotest antiquity; and should discard 
the heathen and despotic maxims and precedents that 



140 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

have come down to the present day,, in the cnrrent doc- 
trine of the legal profession, from the ancient heathen- 
ism and Orientalism that preceded Christianity. 

If the law is viewed as a science based on true phil- 
osophy, it will rest on the Semitic philosophy, which 
deduces all principles from the First Principle, and this 
from the uniform action of God; the rules or uniformi- 
ties of which, in its morality and justice, man is bound, 
by the original and continuing social contract of God 
with man, to imitate as derivative principles of law, 
regulating the conduct of man to man. Hence, all the 
principles of law, being derived, like all the so-called 
Christian laws of nature, from the First Principle, and 
being consequently not made by man but by God, are 
a higher law, paramount over all positive law, all of 
which is of human origin. 

There was a remarkable anticipation of this higher 
law, though in somewhat confused and imperfect state- 
ments, by the great jurists of the ancient Eoman law. 
They, too, treated law as a science, and based it on 
philosophy; but the foundation on which they placed 
it was the heathen philosophy of the Stoics. Among 
their legal maxims, or rules of law, they distinguished 
some as rational from others as positive; deriving the 
former from their philosophy, calling them separately 
laws of nature, or collectively natural law, and regarding 
them as "laws of laws;" thus reaching in their specu- 
lative theory, the logical conclusion, which in their 
despotic government they dared not practically apply, 
or even openly avow, — that their rational rules of law, 
as "laws of laws," or what we call the principles of law, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 141 

were of higher authority than all positive laws. But 
the great truth, that principle is a higher law than 
positive law, was practically vindicated, to a great extent, 
by the ancient Eoman Praetorian law, which was the law 
introduced by the decisions of the Eoman Praetors; who, 
in their official public edicts, upon entering on their 
office, — relying upon the public conscience, the public 
intelligence, and the general support of the legal pro- 
fession, — boldly proclaimed the legal rules by which their 
decisions would be guided; thus laying down, from time 
to time, rational rules, or "laws of laws," derived from 
their philosophy and their law of nature, whereby grad- 
ually many of the barbaric "positive rules" of the old 
Eoman law were superseded. 

But, it must not be forgotten, that the philosophical 
legal system of ancient Eome, however relatively admir- 
able when compared with other ancient bodies of law, 
is the scheme of heathen Stoic philosophy, and that the 
law of nature referred to in ancient Eoman jurisprudence 
is a heathen law of nature, the law by which that philo- 
sophy imagined that Zeus, the immoral chief Eoman 
idol divinity, governed his mythical "City of Zeus." 
Now, the heathen natural law contains many gross 
abominations, such as license to wage offensive war and 
to make conquests, and is altogether different from the 
Christian law of nature, as the law of God, or the prin- 
ciple of law. Hence, although it was a memorable 
event, for his day and generation, when the Dutch law- 
yer, Grotius, set up, in imagination, his curule chair, 
like a Eoman Praetor, assuming to judge among the 
uations of the civilized world, as if they were simple 



142 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Roman proprietors, and when assuming the moral au- 
thority of that magistrate, while sustained by the unani- 
mous voice of the public, he issued his praetorian edict, 
as it were, in his treatise, " On the Law of War and of 
Peace, " requiring them to demean themselves towards 
each other according to the rules of the Roman natural 
law; yet, the present day demands the proclamation of 
a more ancient and a higher law, — the very law of prin- 
ciple and of Grod. This law forbids offensive war and 
conquest, and requires the nations to unite their rational 
efforts for the general welfare. 

Among the legal maxims, still current in law books, 
and descended from the system of ancient heathenism 
and Orientalism, is the maxim that positive law is the 
" command of a political superior." But in the normal 
form of government, in civil representative democracy, 
there is no political superior; and all positive laws are 
public contracts, made by and among the people, either 
immediately and tacitly among themselves, and evi- 
denced by custom; or mediately and expressly, by their 
duly authorized agents, assembled in a legislature, or in 
a diplomatic meeting. Positive laws, therefore, must, 
like all contracts, be conformed to and controlled by 
principle. 

It will be the duty of the legal profession to frame a 
code of common positive law consistent with principle, 
and fit for universal adoption. 

It is also manifest that positive laws, when made 
among the nations of the same race, whether immedi- 
ately or by agents, will be international; and when made 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 143 

in either of these modes, among different races, will be 
Interrace. 

All grave questions of domestic or foreign govern- 
mental policy can be put into the form of a public 
contract, either as the subject matter of a statute, or 
of a treaty. They must all involve a question of law, 
and the same test, by principle, as to the legal validity 
of such a contract, will apply to the question of its ex- 
pediency; both questions resting on the same ultimate 
grounds. For, as the law is conceded, as principle, or 
as the law of God, to be the perfection of reason, the 
question, What is the rule of law resulting from the 
facts, or from a proposed contract, in a particular case? 
and the question, What is expedient, in the light of the 
highest reason, under all circumstances of that case? 
are virtually identical. Hence, it is the duty of the 
legal profession to mature and express, for the guidance 
of the public, deliberate opinions on the legal bearings 
of all important public measures; and, in order to enable 
them to do so, by earnestly cultivating the study, and by 
jointly asserting the paramount authority, of principle, 
they should perfect their organization. 

When, as the prophet predicted, the knowledge of 
God shall cover the earth as the water covereth the 
sea, the knowledge of the law will become universal. 
Then, in the ultimate simplification of the government, 
the legal profession, as is already indicated by the phe- 
nomenal increase of its numbers, will be absorbed into 
the general community. But, until that period arrives, 
the importance of organizing the legal profession, and 
of thereby aiding its mission to maintain the present 



144 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

authority of principle, and thus to secure the progress 
of society without forcible revolutions, should not be 
overlooked. 

The legal profession should be organized as a vol- 
untary association, or general guild, for joint delibera- 
tion and council, aiming to secure its own and the 
public advantage, by promoting the liberal culture and 
the moral conduct of its members in both its branches. 
It should pursue the usual mode of undenominational 
representative organization, by convening in a central 
or convenient place in each nation, state or province, 
representatives chosen indiscriminately from all its classes 
by primary local meetings of its members in the inter- 
mediate territorial districts of the nation, state, or prov- 
ince; a nation composed of only one state having only 
one representative meeting; and a nation composed of 
several states or provinces having a representative meet- 
ing for each of them, and also a central national 
representative meeting of delegates from each of the 
state or provincial meetings. An international repre- 
sentative meeting would consist of delegates chosen 
by the national meetings. An Interrace representative 
meeting could be chosen by the several international 
meetings. The lower representative meetings, in their 
choice of delegates to the higher representative meet- 
ings, should not be confined to their own members. 
The terms of all representatives should be short, and 
shorter for the lower than for the higher meetings; and 
all representatives should be re-eligible. A national rep- 
resentative meeting, or convention, of the legal profes- 
sion should appoint the days and places of its elections 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 145 

and meetings, and the terms of its representatives 
and delegates. Care should be taken that, in the pri- 
mary meetings of the profession, of which due notice 
should be given, every member of every class should 
be free to participate; and should thus .share in all the 
benefits, and be bound by all the constraints, of the 
whole organization. In this way, professional rings and 
close corporations of the few would be avoided, with 
their partial views; and the whole legal profession, after 
freeing itself of those who do not legally or properly 
belong to it, would be raised to a higher and more 
liberal standard, both of excellence and of influence. 

The judges, the prosecuting officers, and the sheriffs, 
or higher executive officers connected Avith the courts 
of the state, province, or nation, should be elected for 
a permanent term, from the legal profession, by a plu- 
rality vote of the people, without reference to political 
parties. The judges should appoint the other officers 
of their courts. 

The courts should not be unnecessarily numerous; 
but should form a system, each being complete, with a 
judge, or a bench of judges, to decide questions of law; 
a jury, to ascertain matters of fact; a recording officer, 
to record its proceedings, and bailiffs, or executive 
officers, to execute its processes. Some should have 
original, and others appellate jurisdiction, in order to 
afford an opportunity, in the interest of justice, to 
correct any errors committed in the first hearing of 
a case. The lowest courts, for small cases, should have 
as able judges as the highest. 



146 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

But, where principle is held to be paramount over 
positive law, and to control all contracts, there cannot 
be a separate set of equity courts. 

The officers of the courts should receive moderate and 
regular salaries; and the costs of the courts should be 
so regulated as to relieve the suitors of the courts from 
unnecessary burdens, and should not be paid to their 
officers. For, in courts having much business, the fees 
paid to their officers by the suitors constitute emolu- 
ments so extravagant as to make the positions of these 
officers coveted prizes in the eyes of political factions, 
and to exert a corrupting influence on the election of 
the judges; especially where judges and the officers of 
their courts are elected by political parties, and are nomi- 
nated in the same party convention. 

68. The four partial organs of the government, its 
political parties, its ordinary or denominational gov- 
ernmental legislature, its body of executive officers, and 
its legal profession, with its official or judicial branch, 
and its lay or practicing branch, having been sufficiently 
discussed, there only remains to be considered its extra- 
ordinary or Undenominational General Eepresentative 
Assembly, called its general governmental convention, 
for exercising the people's reserved powers, whether legis- 
lative, executive, or judicial, as required by the occasion. 
It is a well known and effective agency of the gov- 
ernment, often employed in modern times, to change 
the form of government, or to remove dangerous or 
otherwise objectionable persons from public office, with 
the consent of the people. It effects, in a peaceable 
way, without any disturbance of public order, the same 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 147 

results that could only otherwise be accomplished by a 
violent revolution or civil war. 

Its application presupposes that the people are suffi- 
ciently informed and instructed to note, from time to 
time, the emergence of principles, which are not merely 
opposed to positive laws of long standing and of high 
authority, but which also herald, by that opposition, 
the advent of great political reforms and revolutions. 
The effectual assertion of a great political principle in 
opposition to ancient positive law, is a successful revo- 
lution; and it may be accomplished as thoroughly by the 
resolution of a convention as by a revolutionary uprising 
of the people. 

The undenominational general representative assem- 
bly, or convention, of the integral organ of government, 
its highest legislature, may be of a nation or of a state, 
if the nation contains more than one state; and it con- 
sists of representatives from the intermediate districts 
of the nation or state, chosen from the people indis- 
criminately, without regard to the partial organs of the 
government. 

It is called together by the express or implied general 
agreement of the people; and is invested with all their 
power, so far as necessary to effect the purposes for which 
it is called. It is only brought into existence, upon rare 
occasions, to formally inaugurate great political reforms, 
which have already virtually been decided upon, or 
admitted to be necessary by the people. 

It exercises the reserved powers of the people; and it 
is able, therefore, not only to modify the present institu- 
tions or elements of the government, but also, when a 



148 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

suitable occasion arises, to add to them. For instance, 
in addition to the present courts, and above them, it 
could establish a Political Tribunal, with jurisdiction to 
try and punish for official misconduct, whether political 
or moral, the highest legislative, executive and judicial 
officers of the government, as well as other persons; and 
especially all persons guilty of high crimes against the 
majesty or sovereignty of the people. 

The whole republic, or integral organ, of govern- 
ment, in its normal action, as a civil representative 
democracy, will exhibit, on a review of all its functions, 
a unity, or integral whole, of action. For while its 
political parties are enlightened and honorable associa- 
tions, agreeing upon all fundamental principles, and 
differing only in practical measures; and its legislature 
is virtually composed of conference committees delegated 
from its political parties, and deliberately advising with 
each other, settling their party differences in regard to 
these practical measures, by public contracts of the 
Avhole people, in the form of positive laws; and its ex- 
ecutive officers see to the maintenance of public order 
and the due execution of the laws; its legal profession, 
by the co-operation of both its branches, in one united 
organization, will not only urge the reduction of all pos- 
itive laws, man's imperfect inventions,, to a harmonious 
system, by requiring their conformity to God's para- 
mount universal principles, but it will also inaugurate, 
in the correct decision of litigated cases, according to 
the rule of principle, the universal reign of absolute 
justice. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 149 

Such, as has been sketched, being the normal Social 
Constitution of mankind, already approximated in the 
modern civilization of the white race, and serving as an 
example to the other races, it is manifest that Law, the 
higher law of God, the uniformity of the uniformities 
of God's action, or the First Principle of the Semitic 
philosophy, as in nature, so in mind and in society, or 
in the whole Kingdom of God, is the predominant, the 
ruling, and the harmonizing power. 



CHAPTER V. 

rjlHE General Social Reformation, as the revived, 
-*- predominantly practical side, of the Semitic Phil- 
osophy, and called Practical Christianity, or developed 
Modern Civilization, is attainable by all monotheistic 
nations and races. 

69. The Semitic philosophy, as we have traced it, is 
an exposition, or a general explanatory and descriptive 
view of the Kingdom of God, as a reality, as the one 
universal fact, which, although it cannot be fully ex- 
pressed, and can only be indicated, by language, can, 
by means of the instinctive ideas, be clearly conceived 
and rationally developed by instinctive thought. The 
Semitic philosophy explains the nature, and describes the 
prevailing order of the Kingdom of God, as the universe. 

It explains the nature of it as being, in part, spiritual, 
composed of one superior spirit, God, of the spirits of 
mankind, and the spirits of the inferior animals and 
plants; and in part material, consisting of matter ; 
distinguishing spirit from matter by their respective 
qualities, and showing that the qualities of the one 
are absolutely, and in all respects, different from those 
of the other. 

It describes the order prevailing in the universe, as 
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action, and 

150 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 151 

as such the one First Principle, at once speculative and 
practical, from which all others are derived, and as 
potentially consisting of two derivative systems of prin- 
ciples ; one system being rules for the actions of the 
spiritual part of the universe, and the other system 
being rules for the motions of its material part; and 
both systems comprising the laws of God, which are 
sometimes erroneously called, from a dogma of the 
heathen Stoic philosophy, the laws of nature. 

70. It then uses the relation of man's spirit to his 
body, — a relation analogous, in some respects, to that 
of the spirits of lower animals and plants, respectively, 
to their bodies, — to explain in other respects the relation 
of God, as the one superior spirit, to the whole inorganic 
world, or material universe ; and, after proving by the 
intuitive evidence of consciousness, in voluntarily raising 
an arm, that man's spirit, by its immediate practical 
action, causes within the body to which it is confined 
original motion in matter, it infers that all original 
motion of matter is caused by the immediate practical 
action of spirit; the original motions of the organic 
world by the immediate action of the spirits inhabiting, 
resj)ectively, its several parts, as their bodies; and the 
original motions of the whole inorganic world, or the 
material universe, outside of their bodies, by the imme- 
diate action of God. 

Hence, it follows that both the systems of rules, or 
laws, for actions of spirit and for original motions of mat- 
ter, respectively, are primarily laws for the normal action 
of spirit; and that the one First Principle, comprising 
both systems, and being the uniformity of the uniformi- 



152 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

ties of God's action, takes in the uniformities, or laws of 
man's normal action; man being the image, and his 
normal action being the imitation, of God. 

71. The Kingdom of God, abstractly regarded, is the 
First Principle, which is related to the derivative princi- 
ples, or laws, of all the speculative and practical, physical 
and natural sciences, either as the root to the ramifica- 
tions of a tree, or as a river to the branches contributing 
by their inflow to its volume; according as, in one view, 
the unity of the one God as their immediate origin, or, in 
the other view, the variety of his operations in them, 
is chiefly noticed; although likewise, even when the First 
Principle is likened to a river with numerous tributaries, 
themselves receiving the supply of many springs, and 
these replenished from the lofty and swiftly moving 
clouds, it has then, too, in the spirit of God, as the 
river in the bosom of the ocean, one ultimate source. 

The Kingdom of God, concretely conceived, is the 
compound system of the spiritual and the material uni- 
verse ; including in its spiritual element God and man 
related to each other as the society of God and man, 
related also to the organic world outside of man, and to 
the inorganic world; and including likewise, as its mate- 
rial element, that inorganic world as the instrument and 
the passive means used by the spiritual universe for real- 
izing its action. 

The concrete Kingdom of God exhibits the effects of 
God's action, through the First Principle, upon the 
universe. In this way, he acts immediately, directly, 
constantly, and with uniformity, upon the material uni- 
verse outside of the organic world, that is, upon the 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 153 

inorganic world, by imparting to it original molecular 
and relative motions, the combinations of which deter- 
mine in matter its various qualities and relations. Of 
these it is only necessary here to say that all the problems 
of physical science are now found to be questions of 
motion. 

Further, in the concrete Kingdom of God, by the 
same First Principle, God acts mediately, and indirectly 
upon the spiritual universe, and especially upon the 
spirit of man; using matter as the means of communi- 
cating both his speculative and his practical action. 
Thus he foreshadows, by useful modifications of matter, 
adapted to man's recurring necessities, the elementary 
practical activities of man, and with them the social 
contract of God with man, and the resulting normal 
organization of society. This is easily proved. 

For matter is evidently a necessary medium for com- 
municating the action of spirit from spirit to spirit. 
The form of matter, viewed as a medium for communi- 
cating the spirit's speculative action, is a sign; and 
viewed as a medium for communicating the spirit's 
practical action, it is a tool or instrument. 

Matter is also used to preserve and store, for future 
use, both the speculative and the practical action im- 
parted to it by man; speculative action, in books and 
monuments; practical action, in provisions of food, and 
in money. Similarly, it is recorded that in ancient days, 
as now, signs of the times indicating God's thoughts and 
purposes, have been always recognized by man in the 
changing forms of the inorganic world, whether in the 
inspiring succession of the seasons, or in the expressive 



154 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

face of the heavens; and it is manifest from the re- 
searches of modern science, that the earth, the sun, and 
the stellar universe are not only eternal monuments of 
God's wisdom for the instruction, but also stores of 
correlated various energy for the practical use, of man 
and all the spiritual universe. 

72. The action of spirit being integral, its speculative 
and its practical action are simultaneous and interfused; 
its practical action shaping matter, both as a conductor 
to convey integral spiritual action, and as a sign to ex- 
press its speculative meaning. Thus, man's body, as 
we have seen, is a complicated instrument, framed by 
his spirit, for transmitting the integral spiritual action 
reflected from outward objects to its inward parts, sup- 
posed to be the brain, constituting the material sensuous 
ideas, and for enabling that action to inscribe them as 
signs of the speculative meaning it is designed to convey. 

It is through his body, therefore, that man, apart 
from the spiritual action he receives from his fellow- 
man and the rest of the organic world, takes in the 
spiritual action of the superior spirit, God, reflected from 
the inorganic world; and it is by the interpretation of 
the sensuous ideas, as signs of that action, that he learns 
its intention and design to be the loving service of God 
to all mankind. 

That service man, by reflection, comes to know as 
consisting of the First Principle, and God's resulting 
elementary practical activities of instruction, religious 
service, or communion, industry, charity, and govern- 
ment; the imitation and pursuit of which activities, 
again, by man, leads him, he sees, into the association 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 155 

of God with man, or the original social contract. For 
the isolated individual is impelled, by the conscious 
similarity and inferiority of his spiritual nature to that 
of God, to accept the instruction of the superior spirit, 
and, in pursuance of it, to imitate the other practical 
activities of God, and thus to work with him. Further, 
when man observes the presence of other spiritual beings 
similar and equal to himself, and working, like himself, 
with God, he groups and associates himself with them, 
as a class of equals, working together, for the benefit of 
each other, under the one common superior spirit, and 
he infers that all the elementary activities of God are 
designed both for the imitation and for the benefit of 
all men alike, and are intended to bring about their 
universal co-operation. 

73. Then follows the conviction of every man, that 
if he would imitate God, he must serve all men, and 
serve them, as he is served, by means of those elemen- 
tary activities. The result is a normal association of all 
men with each other, for their common benefit under 
God. This is at first an undenominational association, 
giving equal attention to all the elementary activities. 
Afterwards, as the operations of the original association 
become extended, it is ideally divided into denomina- 
tional associations, or integral organs, for each of the 
elementary activities. The original and the denomina- 
tional associations, with their individuals, while normal, 
and properly doing their own work, are helping each 
other, and are also, in this way, doing the work of 
God. Thus God and mankind are working together, are 
associated 



156 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

This association of G-od with man, is the original and 
continuing social contract. In its formation language has 
no place, but is represented by the sensuous ideas. It 
is a contract by action, without words. It is continuing, 
perpetual, and potentially universal. It embraces all on 
whose hearts the law of G-od is written, or who have a 
knowledge of the true character of G-od; but those who, 
from ignorance, fail to enter into this covenant with 
God, are not therefore excluded from his providential 
care. The domain of the social contract is extended by 
the positive law, which rests on it, and includes it as also 
the First Principle, and all other principles with the 
first, and which binds all who enter society and enjoy its 
benefits, whether they have a particular knowledge of 
the social contract or not. 

Like all valid contracts, the social contract has a con- 
sideration on both sides. The consideration on man's 
part is his recognition of the universality of the con- 
tract, and his consequent implied engagement that man 
shall not selfishly attempt to monopolize the aid God 
gives to all men in his principles and laws; but shall 
altruistically assist God in blessing all other men; and 
the consideration on God's part is, that he will continue 
his principles or laws unchanged, for man's present ben- 
efit and for his future reliance. 

From the social contract is derived, as we have seen, 
the normal organization of society, with its five integral 
organs. 

74. Each of the five integral organs, in its normal 
action, and all, as comprising together the whole social or- 
ganization, have been described; and there only remains 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 157 

the task to point out in each of them some of the 
errors and irregularities that hinder its normal action, 
and prevent its full development. On these errors there 
will first be given some general remarks, to show their 
united scope; afterwards a few of the most important 
will be discussed in view of their removal by a general 
reformation of society. 

In the republic of letters and art, if the views be- 
fore advanced in these papers are admitted, some false 
science, so called, is left for future correction, in the 
extravagances of evolution, of agnosticism, of monism, 
idealism, and materialism. But the correction of these 
errors, after what has been said, may be confidently left 
to the zealous pursuit of truth in true science, which 
now universally engages the learned. As a consequence 
of this activity of the republic of letters and art, leading 
to a more general liberal culture, there must also ensue 
in the community a sound public opinion, a lively public 
conscience, and some general common sense, to guide 
and check the conduct of the mass of individuals. 

In the republic of the church, not to reiterate ques- 
tions of principle already discussed, it may be men- 
tioned that its sacerdotal or governmental organiza- 
tion, after the model of a human government, is a very 
ancient abnormal institution, which is already eighteen 
centuries old in its present form, and is copied after a 
still more ancient heathen sacerdotal institution, reach- 
ing back thousands of years into earlier antiquity; but 
concerning this subject little more need be said, as the 
institution is suffering from the common ills of effete 



158 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

decay, to which all antiquated abnormal institutions, 
under the stress of inquiring reason, at last succumb. 

In the republic of industry a universal industrial war 
has raged for many years, owing to abnormal indus- 
trial organization. Labor, under the social contract, is 
entitled to the equal benefit of the laws of God, both 
in the First Principle, and in their practical applica- 
tion. The ill-judged attempt of the employer and capi- 
talist classes to monopolize the benefit of these laws, 
otherwise called the laws of nature, by securing for 
themselves exclusively the advantages of mechanical in- 
ventions and scientific discoveries, without according a 
corresponding increase of wages or decrease of the work- 
ing hours, is the real source of grievance of the labor 
class; and the proper remedy will be the abandonment 
of violent methods and the resort to reason, by the 
labor class, and a rational appeal, in a normal indus- 
trial organization, to the consumer class, which controls, 
as it includes, all the industrial classes; as it has been 
demonstrated that the vital and lasting interests of all 
the industrial classes, in the matter of wages, as in all 
other important respects, are identical. 

In the republic of public charity, devoted to the 
regulation of normal social intercourse, and to the pro- 
motion of public moral reforms, intoxication is encoun- 
tered as a master public evil that requires the united 
energies of the people for its reformation. 

In the republic of government, at home and abroad, 
there are many abuses calling for suitable remedies; but 
these abuses are not so universal as those of the other 
integral organs; government everywhere among the 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 159 

white race, except Russians, Poles, Turks, Arabians and 
Persians, having progressed far in the way from Oriental 
despotism to civil representative democracy. Yet all the 
partial organs of government need some reformation, — 
chiefly its political parties and its legal profession; as 
the reform of these two would include that of its legisla- 
ture and its executive officers. 

The disgraceful conduct of party leaders at home, — 
constituting a so-called ring, entirely distinct from, but 
within, each political party, which, as such, however, 
is an honorable association, — is illustrated by the action 
of such leaders, controlling the party, in accepting and 
counting notoriously fraudulent votes for their presi- 
dential candidate in 1876; again, in attempting to carry 
a presidential election by bribery; and, as charged, by 
accomplishing the election of a president by the same 
means. To charge such misdeeds on a political party 
would be a libel on popular government. 

But the introducing of negro suffrage, in the country 
of the white race, is not the work of a ring, but of a 
party, by an error based on good intentions, and surely 
awaiting its correction from the people's "sober second 
thought." 

The legal profession has furnished, notoriously, many 
members of the political rings of all parties; and it 
greatly needs a thorough, universal organization, to 
keep all its members under proper control, as well as 
to extend and confirm its legitimate and salutary 
influence. 

75. A general reformation of society must be, from 
what has been said before, a more perfect realization of 



160 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

the Kingdom of God, as an integral system of knowledge 
and of practice, both in the individual and in the 
community. 

To be successful, it will require the co-operation of 
all genuine reformers in matters of education or science, 
of religion, of industry, of public charity, and of govern- 
ment. For these elementary activities form one integral 
social system, and any derangement in one of them ob- 
structs the rest; so that every particular reform in one 
of them depends for its success on the general reform of 
all. 

The harmonizing of the leaders of at least approxi- 
mately all social reforms, the reform of the reformers, 
is a very great difficulty that must be encountered at 
the outset of a general social reformation. But, when 
once accomplished, it will produce a union and co-op- 
eration of forces that can be applied successively, with 
overpowering effect, to each of the needed reforms, and 
then eventually to make them all unite. At present, 
however, the advocates of one reform will strongly 
oppose another, while both can be shown to be neces- 
sary parts of one more general reform. 

An embarrassment in the way of combined action for 
the reform of social errors and abuses, lies in the fact 
that some of them are both ancient and general; so that 
the attempt to reform them implies not only a criticism, 
the expression of which the discussion of the reform 
necessitates, on the past and present action of the great 
white race; but also a grave censure on our near ances- 
tors, from whom we have inherited the institutions, 
good and evil, under which we live; and even on par- 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 161 

ticular great men of the past, of whom we are justly 
proud, but who are recorded in history as having orig- 
inated, or at least supported, those evils. But, as 
greatness and limitation are often found together in 
the same race and in the same individual; to call 
attention to the shortcoming of the truly great, 
whether an individual or a race, and thereby to vindi- 
cate the truth of history, and to utilize its lessons for 
the present and the future generations of mankind, is, 
in fact, a necessary, although a reluctant, undertaking. 

Now, when, in order to get a view of the general 
social reformation that is demanded, we examine in 
succession the present social errors and abuses, with 
their remedies, we will find that these errors and abuses, 
as departures in thought and practice from the one 
First Principle, are intimately related to each other; 
and that, for effecting their respective remedies as 
partial revivals of that principle, in its various aspects, 
a combined attempt to promote a general revival of 
that principle, as the guiding element of the social con- 
tract, and as the necessary condition for realizing the 
Kingdom of God, or perfect society, would suffice, and 
would harmonize all the efforts necessary to bring about 
that general social reformation. 

The conception, in various stages of development, of 
the First Principle, being common to all men, leading 
them to expect, at the same time, the same series of 
helpful or unfavorable events, and then jointly, to pre- 
pare for them, is the means by which the co-operation 
of mankind in society is accomplished. For the past, 
the present, and the future, as ultimate effects of the 



162 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

uniform controlling action of God, being the continuous 
outward manifestation of that principle, the present 
containing the past as its cause, and the future as its 
effect; the conception of that principle enables man not 
only to explain the past by the present and the present 
by the past; but also by the past and the present to pre- 
dict the future. 

But, while a full and clear conception of the First 
Principle, as the uniformity of the uniformities of God's 
action, is of the highest importance for man's specu- 
lative and practical action, it can only be sought, and it 
must be gained, by careful observation and experiment, 
and the reasoned study of the resulting sensuous ideas, 
or so-called experience. 

Such a clear conception of that principle, being a 
revival of it in man's consciousness, must be not only 
the source of the laws and predictions of all true science, 
but also the ground of that knowledge of the spiritual 
nature of God, of man, and of society, that is necessary 
to guide man in advancing and completing, by the nor- 
mal organization of society, its general reformation. 

But a scant, superficial, and careless conception of the 
First Principle, being a virtual departure from it, and 
involving a neglect of exact experience, with a result- 
ing confusion of thought, must afford occasion, first, for 
self-deception and error concerning the material nature 
of the inorganic universe, and the laws of physical 
science; and then concerning the spiritual nature and 
action of God, of man and of society. The omission, 
therefore, of the leading integral organ of society, the 
republic of letters and art, to clearly conceive and 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 163 

appreciate the First Principle, must seriously obstruct a 
general social reformation. 

76. Accordingly, the first of the fundamental errors 
requiring a remedy in the general social reformation, 
and to be now examined, is the entertainment, even in 
the white race, by a great part of the republic of letters 
and art, of the false Oriental science handed down from 
the earliest historical times, and the consequent failure 
of that integral organ to fully apprehend the First 
Principle. 

That false, ancient Oriental science assigned a malig- 
nant moral character to matter, thereby making matter 
spiritual, and spirit consequently material. It thus con- 
founded both, either as idealism or materialism, and cul- 
minated in idolatry; first, in Pantheism, which considers 
the whole material universe as G-od; and then in the 
subsequent multitudinous forms of idolatry, arising from 
splitting up the conception of the inorganic world as 
God, and making each of its parts a subordinate or 
derivative god, as the sun, the moon, the stars, the 
earth, the winds, the waters. It then supplemented 
these gods, to suit man's growing depravation, by going 
down into the impure organic world, and making gods of 
its trees and animals, its beasts, birds, reptiles, insects, 
and fishes. Last of all, it deified the most degraded of 
all things, men divested of all the noble characteristics of 
humanity involved in the imitation of the character of 
the one true G-od; and who masquerade as selfish, crafty, 
and cruel political and ecclesiastical despots, under the 
false but most significant colors of seemingly authorized 
representatives and vicegerents from a supernatural and 



164 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

cruel monster, described as disregarding all human rights 
in his desire to elevate his assuming representatives and 
official servants above the masses of mankind, by 
making all other men slaves to serve his pretended favor- 
ites. Thus the scale of Oriental idols runs down from 
sun gods, moon gods, star gods, beast gods, fish gods, 
bird gods, snake gods, to the base man gods of political 
and ecclesiastical despotism. 

This Oriental error, which still pervades, in its ele- 
mentary form of monism, much of modern so-called 
science and philosophy, results from carelessly ignoring 
the primary truth taught by the sensuous ideas, that 
spirit differs, in every respect, as an active agent, from 
matter as a passive means and instrument, subservient to 
the spirit's action; so that the spirit, whether of man or of 
God, differs, as active subject, from its immediate object, 
which must be matter; as matter is the medium by which 
the action of spirit is received and conducted or trans- 
mitted by the subject. By neglecting the nature of the 
principles of science, as uniformities of God's action, or 
laws of God, exhibited in matter, as something moved by 
him, and therefore altogether different from him, this 
error not only precludes all physical science, which must 
cease to be science when its matter is spiritualized, 
and is no longer matter; but it also perverts the moral 
character of God; who must cease to be a pure spirit or 
a good spirit, when he is in any way identified with the 
Oriental conception of matter, and is thus materialized. 
Hence, this error sets up, instead of the true God, and 
widely differing from him, an idol of science, which, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 165 

because it is purely imaginary, is incapable of being 
known. 

It is to this revamped error of ancient Orientalism 
that must be attributed the rise of modern agnosticism, 
and the establishment of a scientific monotheistic idol- 
atry, with an unknown idol, but with an influence dis- 
astrous at once to the progress of science, and to the 
perfection of all practical social life, which must be the 
imitation of a known G-od, of perfect truth and morality. 

Notwithstanding, however, the almost universal prev- 
alence of that ancient heathen Oriental error, some of 
the rules or principles of art, and some principles of 
the science of mathematics, which in their lower stages 
are independent of that error, seem to have been early 
collected, by means of the sensuous ideas, among some 
ancient nations, especially the Greeks. But it is owing 
to obstruction from that error that the principles, or 
laws, of the physical sciences, and the methods of scien- 
tific inquiry have only been discovered in modern times, 
mostly since Francis Bacon. And in all the practical 
operations of modern society the injurious effects of 
that error are still being experienced. 

Thus, the fundamental error of the republic of letters 
and art, in the white race, is its failure to clearly and 
fully apprehend the First Principle of the Kingdom of 
God; and this error, induced by the ancient error of 
heathen Orientalism, and injuriously affecting all the 
interests of society, must necessarily, in a general social 
reformation, be first corrected. 

The white race, although it has partially failed to 
clearly apprehend the First Principle of the Kingdom 



166 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

of God, has hitherto been mentioned as being the first 
impersonation of the Kingdom of God; as exemplifying 
in its practice normal social organization; as the leader 
of the other races, far in advance of them all, and as 
distinctively the race of progress. Such, indeed, it is; 
and as such it holds, in view of its obligation to God, 
under the social contract, a position of grave respon- 
sibility to the other races, both as their natural instructor 
and as their natural guardian, as their teacher of the 
truth, and as the protector of their rights. 

But it must be remembered that the white race is 
endowed with liberty; that while liberty is a priceless 
treasure, its abuse is fraught with unspeakable evils; 
that this race is as free to lapse into error as it is 
free to advance toward the truth, as free to do evil as 
it is free to do right, as free to worship idols as 
it is free to serve and imitate God; and that without 
this liberty it would have no approving judgment of 
truth, and no moral consciousness of merit in its service 
to God, or in its practical goodness to man. 

It should not surprise us, therefore, to find in the 
white race, as the result of the abuse of its liberty, 
occasional instances of temporary degradation in error 
and crime, both individual and national; and instances 
extending, in the case of nations and even of the 
whole race, over tracts of centuries and millenniums 
of debasement. Against the repetition of these lapses, 
we are morally bound, knowing the cause of such 
disasters to be a departure from the principles of the 
Kingdom of God, to provide, by a timely and general 
social reformation, an adequate remedy. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 167 

For individuals, nations, and the race, are always 
free to resume, by repentance, their place in the King- 
dom of God. While error and crime are departures 
from the First Principle, repentance is a return to it. 

The departure from the First Principle by mankind 
in general led to almost universal error and crime, 
which culminated, as we have seen, in ancient heathen- 
ism, comprised in despotism, idolatry, and sacerdotalism, 
and maintained by ignoring the social contract. It 
resulted in offensive wars of conquest and subjugation, 
with consequent domestic as well as political and ecclesi- 
astical slavery in the masses of the people, throughout 
the known world. Then was preached in the white 
race the noted call to repentance, and a new era of 
hope and of ultimate civilization and liberty was inau- 
gurated by the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. 

At that time, the white race commenced a glorious 
career of progress; but it soon lapsed again into grave 
heathen errors and crimes, which now again call for 
repentance and reform. The necessity for immediately 
heeding this call is manifest. 

For, judging from the net result of the alternate 
progress and retrogression of the white race, even since 
the beginning of the new era, not to speak of the 
danger of a prolonged positive relapse, it would require, 
at the slow rate of the absolute progress of the race, a 
millennium before the error of Orientalism can be entirely 
disentangled and eliminated, in the speculative and prac- 
tical action of modern civilization, from the First Prin- 
ciple. Hence the necessity for directing universal 
attention to that principle and for working up its 



168 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

universal revival, as the first step of the community, 
or society, into the Kingdom of God. 

This revival must be scientific, philosophic, and even 
in part metaphysical, — engaging not merely the emo- 
tions, but the highest reasoning powers of the learned; 
while it is taken up and followed out, by means of the 
sensuous ideas, in the instinctive thought, and in a 
rational public opinion, of the masses of the people. 

When the republic of letters and art has measurably 
discarded the fundamental Oriental error, which still 
dwarfs and perverts its energy, it will be free, as the 
predominantly speculative, and the leading integral 
organ of society, to develop from the First Principle, 
and to teach in its universities and other institutions of 
learning, for the benefit of all the predominantly practi- 
cal integral organs of society, not only all derivative, 
speculative and practical principles, but the whole im- 
plied scheme of the social contract. 

While the discovery, elaboration, and teaching of all 
principles belong properly to the republic of letters and 
art, the practical application of these principles is the 
appropriate work of the other integral organs. Leaving, 
therefore, the republic of letters and art, for its part of 
the proposed general social reform, to develop and to free 
from heathen Oriental influence the First Principle, we 
will glance at the leading practical errors in the other 
integral organs that need a remedy. 

77. In the republic of the church, the religious in- 
tegral organ of society, the most prominent practical 
error prevailing in by far the greater portion of it, apart 
from its mere dogmatic errors, resulting from the false 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 169 

Oriental heathen teaching of the republic of letters and 
art, is its abnormal organization. This is the self-con- 
stituted, non-representative ring, adopted from the forms 
of heathen despotism, and opposed to the normal general 
form of social organization, called civil representative 
democracy. 

The supposed basis of this fundamental practical error 
of the republic, or integral organ, of the church, is the 
assumption that its permanent so-called heavenly type, 
the Kingdom of God in heaven, is analogous to a human 
despotic government; and that God is consequently to be 
regarded as an absolute monarch, or despot, issuing 
arbitrary commands for man to obey. 

But the laws of God are not His commands; other- 
wise, men could not fail always to obey them. His laws 
are the uniformities of His action; and it is by His action 
towards men, that God shows them what they should do 
to each other. It is not by words, an imperfect inven- 
tion of man, but by perfect acts, that God tells men 
what they should do. There is in man's nature an innate 
nobility, as well as a tendency to imitation, that leads 
him, when he sees a perfect ideal or example of conduct, 
to do what is right. When man knows God, he can 
not fail voluntarily to attempt, to the extent of his 
ability, to imitate Him. Being free, it would not be 
right to drive him by irresistible commands, which would 
take his freedom away. The moral restraints upon 
man's actions are their rational and easily foreseen im- 
mediate consequences, in which consists the discipline 
of God. Besides, if God, for any purpose, had ever 
literally spoken to man, or addressed him otherwise than 



170 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

by His Providential actions, He would do so now, for 
God is unchangeable. 

The explanation of the fact, that in very ancient times 
the laws of God, as the Ten Commandments, and the 
two Great Commandments, were put into the form of 
commands, is that, in those times, heathen, Oriental 
despotic government being almost everywhere estab- 
lished, and most human laws being issued in the form 
of despotic commands, God, who was represented as a 
despot, was also supposed in His law-giving to imitate 
the usual earthly despotic forms. Hence, those persons 
who were then believed to have learned, in any way, the 
will of God, and who consequently felt justified in say- 
ing before the people, ".Thus saith the Lord," were led 
to put their honest conception of His will into what was 
generally received as the most forcible, and the most 
appropriate, official form, which evidently must then 
have been the form of a despotic command. 

All normal human society has been shown to be the 
association of God with man, based on an original and 
continuing social contract between God and man. The 
conception, first, of the Kingdom of God, and then of 
the church, in imitation of it, as a rule or government 
of God over man, is a purely heathen, Oriental, despotic, 
and sacerdotal invention. It is the contrivance of some 
ancient, forgotten ring of office-seekers and place-hunters; 
but surviving, like other rings, in the consequences of its 
evil deeds. It is a scheme designed to create a number of 
well-paid priestly, or sacerdotal, public offices, parallel 
in their emoluments, and in public estimation and 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 171 

influence, with the class of political offices; thus throw- 
ing a double burden on the people. 

Although, at first, the political offices of the ancient 
despotism, including the office of the despot himself, 
were primarily supported by military power, and the 
sacerdotal offices by idolatry and superstition, both sup- 
ports afterwards became blended, and both classes of 
public officers afforded to each other mutual protection; 
until, in Christendom, in the middle ages, the sacerdotal 
officers attempted, by usurped political power, to subor- 
dinate to themselves the political officers, or the political 
government. 

It was in times of general ignorance that the sacerdotal 
or ecclesiastical officers, calling themselves the church, 
overcame by their so-called spiritual, or rather supersti- 
tious weapons, the temporal weapons of the political gov- 
ernment of the state; and asserted for themselves, in the 
name of the church, but without any authority from the 
people, a paramount government, with despotic temporal 
power, over the whole world. Since the thirteenth cen- 
tury, however, in proportion to the increase of public 
intelligence in Christendom, the governmental author- 
ity, the so-called temporal power, of the ecclesiastical 
officers of the church, the hierarchy, has gradually 
declined. 

But, until very recently, in the second half of the 
present century, the head, or Pope of the hierarchy, or 
body of ecclesiastical officers of the larger portion of the 
Christian church, the Roman Catholic, has maintained, 
with few interruptions, at Rome, over a circumscribed 
mass of Italian political subjects, a despotic throne, 



172 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

shorn, indeed, of the splendor of much of the tem- 
poral power it formerly symbolized beyond the limits of 
Italy, but distinctly foreshadowing the hope of that 
hierarchy to resume and extend over the whole world 
the full measure of its former temporal power. 

If the Pope has temporal power, as he claims, he is 
clearly a despot; for there is no constitution emanating 
from the people to limit his power, nor is he elected by 
the people, or by representatives of the people. If the 
temporal power claimed by the Pope and the hierarchy 
is lawful, the Italians and the rest of the world are not 
entitled to liberty. But if the Italians and the rest of 
the world are entitled to liberty, as one of the boons of 
Christianity, the temporal power claimed by the Pope 
and the hierarchy is not lawful. 

The hierarchy, in claiming temporal power, is not 
only plainly aiming to set up a temporal government of 
the hierarchy in opposition to the spiritual Kingdom of 
God, but is also engaged, in opposition to the temporal 
rights and liberty of the people, in a direct conflict 
against the principle of civil representative democracy. 

Both Saint Peter and Saint Paul, far from being mere 
ecclesiastical shams and make-believes, are proved by 
unquestionable records to have been honorable gentle- 
men, as well as saints, in the best sense of those words; 
and doubtless, in imitation of the master, whom they 
openly and honestly professed to follow, they would 
have scorned to claim a temporal power involving neces- 
sarily a government "of this world," which he dis- 
claimed. Nor is it possible to prove, that any unsophis- 
ticated follower of Saint Peter or Saint Paul, or of their 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 173 

common master, can consistently claim, in his ecclesias- 
tical capacity, any temporal power in opposition to the 
political government of the state. 

An ecclesiastical ring, with its government, is not 
peculiar to one religious denomination. It is found alike 
among Jews, Mohammedans and Christians, Roman 
Catholics and Protestants; except some Christian de- 
nominations which have advanced to clearer notions of 
the proper separation and independence of the church 
from the state and of the state from the church. 
Wherever there is an order of clergy separate from, and 
claiming superiority to, the laity, there are the rudiments 
of an ecclesiastical ring with its government, which, 
although it may at present be impotent in deed, is evil 
in its tendency. 

If the Christian church, in all its divisions, or 
branches, will reject its ecclesiastical ring and ecclesias- 
tical government, and adopt a normal organization of the 
church, according to the general organizing principle of 
civil representative democracy; electing by the people 
of each of its denominations, respectively, those whom 
each chooses to honor and support as its religious leaders, 
teachers, and officers; the whole church, by fair repre- 
sentation, can easily be united in one organization, under 
the general Christian tradition, as one Christendom, com- 
bining all the religious zeal, the calm piety, and the 
saintly devotion of the whole Christian body, as an 
example to be followed by the other sections of the uni- 
versal church. 

The discussion leading to this result ought not to be 
made to hinge on names of ecclesiastical distinctions that 



174 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

have been heretofore acrimoniously used. But even the 
old sectarian shibboleths that are employed to express 
and hedge different shades of religious belief or diversities 
of religious ceremonial and office — as Roman Catholic, 
Old Catholic, Greek, Protestant, Presbyterian, Baptist, 
Methodist, bishop, archbishop, presbyter, priest, pope, 
deacon, elder, minister, pastor — may be emptied of their 
uncharitable implications, and made to do good service 
in designating indifferent outward forms of highly im- 
portant things that are, respectively, essentially the 
same at heart. 

Even the word priest, which to many persons smacks 
strongly of heathenism and of the old dispensation, 
because it is used to translate the classical and the He- 
brew words that signify the bloody, butchering sacrificers 
of innocent animals, and even of men, upon the ancient 
altars, is a perfectly innocent Anglo-Saxon contraction of 
the familiar New Testament word presbyter, which 
simply means elder. 

When, by separating entirely, in a normal organization 
of society, the integral organ of the church from the 
integral organ of government, and assigning to each 
what properly belongs to it and no more, the mock eccle- 
siastical governments and their feuds are dispensed with, 
there will be a reign of religious toleration and peace. 
The social communion under one organization of the dif- 
ferent religious denominations will not be prevented by 
their various false dogmas, which will then be left to 
the enlightened discussion and calm judgment of the 
republic of letters and art, to be finally settled in con- 
formity with the First Principle. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 175 

At the same time, the numerous benevolent and char- 
itable orders and associations supported by those denom- 
inations can be united with others in their common 
charitable and benevolent aims in the integral organ of 
charity. 

78. The next practical error to be considered is an 
error of organization in the republic, or integral organ, 
of industry, leading to the prevailing general industrial 
anarchy, or industrial war. The practical error of the 
republic of industry is two-fold. First, it neglects the 
separation of its general organization from the other 
integral organs, and especially from the integral organ 
of government; which, from ancient heathen times to 
the present, has uniformly degraded, to the ultimate 
injury of all the industrial classes, the class of working- 
men; who, under the ancient despotic governments, were 
slaves, under the feudal governments were serfs, and 
under the modern governments are impoverished by 
monopolies, privileges, and so-called protection, granted 
to a few favorites. Secondly, it fails to secure among 
all the industrial classes a co-operative union and organi- 
zation based on the identity, in the long run, of their 
respective interests. 

The integral organ, or republic of industry, consists 
of four distinct industrial classes, ideally separate and 
integrally connected; each, therefore, interpenetrating 
the rest, and all interoperating with each other — the 
working-men, the employers, the capitalists, and the 
consumers. In a higher state of society than the pres- 
ent, the interests of the working-men and employers 
will be considered so absolutely identical as to constitute 



176 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

them one class, that of labor, the employers repre- 
senting the highest grade of skilled labor; as in a still 
higher state of society the interests of all the indus- 
trial classes will be regarded as identical. But for the 
present the four industrial classes named above will be 
treated as distinct from each other. 

In the arrangement of these classes, sex is here un- 
noticed.' Working men include working women, as enti- 
tled to the same rights; and if it be said by the men that 
most women are not producers, and are not concerned 
in the general interests of . productive industry, but are 
properly limited to domestic work, the reply is, that 
the domestic women as a class are the mothers of the 
producers, and for this reason should be eminently re- 
spected, and comfortably supported, in their domestic 
work, by the men. 

Seemingly, the evil effects of the two-fold practical 
error of the republic of industry are felt exclusively by 
the class of working-men, whose loud complaints of 
wrongs are heard, and whose multitudinous unions and 
associations for obtaining redress are seen, throughout 
the civilized world. But, as separate and distinct classes, 
the employers, capitalists, and consumers suffer also, in 
many instances, and in many respects, from the same 
error. For the result of that two-fold error is the pre- 
vailing universal industrial war, which threatens with 
disaster and unsettles every industrial interest. In this 
war, as in other wars, a few individuals, who in this 
war are capitalists and employers, may heap up plunder; 
but among the multitudes disabled and stripped upon 
the industrial battle-field are many who have been 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 



177 



generous employers and liberal capitalists, and are com- 
pelled to surrender to the temporary victors of their 
own class the honest accumulations of a well-spent life, 
and the very business by which they trusted to gain a 
livelihood. 

Yet, passing by the grievances of capitalists and em- 
ployers, let us see what remedy can be applied to right 
the wrongs of the working-men. For, if it does justice 
to these, it must equally benefit the other classes. The 
industrial elements, which all live alongside of each other 
in society, like adjoining tribes, are labor, the business 
capacity of employers, capital and consumption. Each 
of these elements is indispensable to the rest. The 
present industrial policy, which has led to the present 
industrial war, is to arm each of these elements by a 
hostile threatening combination against all the others. 
This is the policy of ancient, heathen, oifensive, con- 
quering war; by which one tribe, instead of cultivating 
with each adjoining tribe neighborliness and commercial 
intercourse, which would enrich both, invades it, con- 
quers it, robs it, enslaves it. Industry is a machine, 
and the interest of all its parts is to keep it going, for 
when one part stops, the whole stops. So, when con- 
sumers strike, or boycott the producer, by refusing to 
purchase goods, or by insisting on getting them for cost 
or less, at a bargain; — that stops production, and injures 
labor, capital and employer; when capital strikes, or 
gets timid and withdraws from business; — that injures 
labor, employer and consumer; when employers strike, 
or lock out, or reduce wages; — that injures labor, capital 
and consumer; and when labor strikes, that injures labor, 



178 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

employer, capital and consumer. Thus, the working- 
men suffer by every stoppage of industry, no matter 
whose strike is the cause; and every industrial class can 
strike, and when it pleases, does strike. It is evident, 
therefore, that the remedy for the evils suffered by the 
working-men must be the stoppage of those strikes, 
which are the battles of the industrial war; and it is 
equally evident that these battles, like the battles in 
every other war, can only be stopped by negotiation, 
through representatives of the parties to it, resulting in 
a treaty or contract among them. 

An industrial treaty of peace, then, among all the 
industrial classes, adopted deliberately and based on 
rational conditions, is the remedy demanded by the in- 
terests of them all, and especially of the working-men. 
But to accomplish a wise treaty leading to beneficial and 
permanent industrial peace, it is not enough for the 
contending parties to be banded or brigaded in hostile 
armies; they must have a civil and national organization 
which can appoint duly authorized agents to conduct 
and conclude negotiations for peace. Mere military 
bodies can at most make a temporary truce. 

In order to bring about an industrial peace, it is 
necessary for the republic of industry to correct its two- 
fold practical error, preparatory to disbanding its hostile 
and threatening combinations, its armies; and, after 
separating itself from the government, to establish for 
itself, in the way already pointed out, according to the 
principle of civil representative democracy, a normal 
social organization of all its industrial classes. This or- 
ganization would include a general industrial legislature; 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 179 

the resolutions of which, as industrial positive law, 
would bind all the industrial classes, and place them, in 
regard to each other, in normal and equitable relations. 

The preliminary steps to this organization could be 
taken by some concerted action of organized labor in- 
viting to a conference with its representatives the repre- 
sentatives of the numerous large organized bodies of 
employers and capitalists; or the invitation to a confer- 
ence could come from the other side; or, if neither of 
these hostile parties would make the first move, the con- 
sumer, as the equally interested body of the general pub- 
lic, could proceed, of its own motion, to effect the neces- 
sary general industrial organization. 

It should be particularly noticed in the republic of 
industry, that, according to the Semitic philosophy, 
every normal association, by taking the First Principle 
as its guide, virtually has God as a leading or controlling 
member, and according to his known will, must seek not 
only its own, but also the public welfare, in conformity 
with the general social contract. 

It may also be added, that as all legitimate capital, 
besides the direct gifts of God, originally consists in the 
labor and wages saved by the working-man, there also 
belongs to the working-man, according to his skill, indus- 
try, and character, the opportunity to become an em- 
ployer and a capitalist; and that, accordingly, while 
many if not most of the employers are or have been 
working-men, a large proportion of the vast capital of the 
savings banks belongs to working-men, or has been accu- 
mulated by them for their families. But, in addition to 
the opportunities of advancement open to the individual 



180 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

working-man, it is plain that if a large number of work- 
ing-men known to each other will associate themselves 
as a corporation, under capable directors of their own 
choice, and will pool their labor and their savings, as a 
labor bank, which, if well managed, would soon take the 
place of the present savings banks, they can advance 
their savings in suitable sums, well secured, and their 
labor of different kinds in gangs, by contracts guaranteed 
on both sides against strikes, and in other respects, on 
business principles, to employers of labor. Thus, work- 
ing-men, by bringing their own labor and their own cap- 
ital into profitable co-operation, can not only place their 
capital in friendly competition with other capital, but can 
also influence in their favor, and at the same time greatly 
benefit, such employers as they approve. 

Such labor banks, ably conducted, would be highly 
conservative. They would practically secure the har- 
mony, and thereby demonstrate the identity, of the inter- 
ests of all the industrial classes; furnishing capital to the 
employers, and work to the working-men, and thus 
enlarging, for the benefit of other capitalists and of the 
consumers alike, the scope of the general business of 
transportation and distribution; while, according to the 
principles of industrial economy, as distinguished from 
so-called political economy, the dangers of overproduc- 
tion would be avoided by the industrial statistics, and the 
facility of intercommunication and consultation among 
the producers, which would be furnished by the normal 
general organization of the republic of industry. 

In contrast with the conservative general industrial 
organization, and its labor banks of working-men, as 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 181 

above described, the radical socialistic notion of vesting 
all capital in the government should receive a passing 
notice. A few obvious considerations will show that the 
socialistic scheme based on this notion opposes the social 
contract, by pauperizing the masses, and thus depriving 
individuals of the power to charitably help their fellow- 
men; as it would cut off the career of advancement of the 
industrious, intelligent, prudent, and moral working-man, 
by compelling all to share the same lot with the idle, 
improvident, and sensual — the evident lot of ultimate 
equal pauperism, barbarism, and slavery. For this 
scheme would make the government the sole capitalist, 
and virtually the sole or chief employer, without any 
competition to check the rapacity of the central political 
ring, which necessarily, on account of the extreme com- 
plication of the machinery of the government, would 
rule with despotic power, and would doubtless repeat 
the old story of the many governed and utilized by 
the few. Thus, this scheme would intensify, in the 
highest degree, the very evils now charged to the hos- 
tile combination of capital and employers against labor; 
but which, it has been shown, may be entirely removed 
by the rational harmonious action of all the industrial 
classes. 

79. The practical error of the integral organ, or 
republic, of public charity, besides its omission to com- 
plete its separate general organization, in the form 
already indicated, is its failure, in cases of aggravated 
and widespread moral delinquency, threatening great pub- 
lic disaster, to invoke, in support of its efforts for public 



182 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

moral reform, the aid of the moral authority, fortified 
by the physical power, of the government. 

In early rude societies, merely moral offences are not 
generally noticed; public crimes are of few kinds, and 
the public moral reformer does not walk abroad. New 
kinds of crimes, because not at first regarded as such, 
are for a long time committed, not only with impunity, 
but also without reproach; until public conscience, dis- 
closing their true nature, modifies in regard to them the 
public opinion, and the public opinion modifies the 
public law, causing it to declare them criminal, and, as 
such, punishable. From time to time, in the progress of 
society, some apparently merely moral delinquencies of 
little seeming public interest, have from changing cir- 
cumstances in the environment of society, become dan- 
gerous to the social order; and the government has felt 
itself bound to stigmatize them as public crimes, and to 
impose upon them severe punishments. 

For instance, when personal property was of small 
comparative value, and was usually kept in the owner's 
immediate possession, almost the only crimes recognized 
by the old law, in regard to personal property, were lar- 
ceny, or private stealing, and robbery; as they involved 
a fraudulent or forcible taking away of personal prop- 
erty from the possession of the owner, against his will. 
But, if the owner voluntarily parted with the possession 
of personal property, there was no public crime com- 
mitted when the person to whom it was entrusted con- 
verted it to his own use. For a breach of trust was not 
then regarded as a criminal offence, but a mere moral 
delinquency. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 183 

But, when transactions of trade, that required the 
money or other personal property of one person to be 
entrusted to another, increased in number and impor- 
tance, breaches of trust became an injury to the public, 
and they were considered as violations of the higher law 
of principle, and as illegal. Positive laws were then 
enacted by the government to declare them public 
crimes, and to impose upon them definite punishments. 
So, there are many other acts that were formerly com- 
mitted with impunity, and, in the case of duelling, with 
even decided public approbation, that have now been 
stigmatized and are punished by the law, as odious public 
crimes. 

From the experience of the past, it must be con- 
sidered probable, that, with the advance of society in 
intelligence, in religion, and in morality, and with the 
increasing complication of human affairs, requiring their 
regulation by the far reaching and consistent system of 
the First Principle, other instances of acts committed 
now, not only with impunity, but without any suspicion 
of their criminality, by multitudes of individuals, will 
be found, on examination, to be highly injurious to 
the public, and as such both immoral and of evil 
public example, or criminal. Such acts, in an enlight- 
ened community, by whomsoever committed, even by 
individuals in criminal ignorance of the criminality of 
their acts, must be condemned in the public conscience, 
not only as private immoral practices, but also as public 
wrongs in violation of the social contract; because these 
acts are injurious to the public, while the social contract 
requires that all acts, whether of individuals or of 



184 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

associations, must, if not indifferent, conduce to the 
public welfare. 

But, when the public conscience is thoroughly awak- 
ened in regard to acts of individuals producing any 
public wrong, it will steadily direct the public opinion 
of the people to the practical steps necessary to prevent 
such acts. Nor can it be doubted that a moderate law 
called for by the public conscience for this purpose, 
declaring such acts of individuals to be criminal and 
punishable, will be enforced with all the power of the 
aroused public conscience, and of the enlightened and 
instructed public opinion of the people, so as to pre- 
vail triumphantly among their masses; aud that the 
opposers of it, however self-sufficient in their own pri- 
vate estimation, will be publicly set down among the 
other criminal classes, and will be treated accordingly. 

That intoxication or drunkenness is a monstrous pub- 
lic evil, and that, being voluntarily or intentionally 
inflicted, it is a grave public wrong, is undoubted. 
Equally certain is the fact, that it is the use of intoxi- 
cating drinks or drugs by individuals, that produces this 
public wrong. The conclusion is inevitable that the act 
of individuals in using intoxicants, in itself, and as an 
evil public example, is criminal. It is a mistaken 
notion to regard the makers and sellers of intoxicants as 
exclusively responsible for the public evil caused by their 
use. The makers and sellers of intoxicants are guilty as 
aiders and abettors of the crime of those that use them; 
but the principal criminals, primarily guilty of the great 
public wrong voluntarily inflicted on the public by intox- 
ication or drunkenness, are those by whom intoxicants 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 185 

are used. For, if intoxicants were not used, they would 
not be made, and they could not be sold, to produce 
intoxication; although they might be made and sold for 
an innocent purpose, as for use in the arts. 

When the public conscience becomes aware of the true 
state of the case, and sees who are the most guilty parties 
in the perpetration of the public wrong of general intox- 
ication, it will stir up the public opinion to frame and 
enforce a stern but moderate law placing the use of 
intoxicants among the most baneful public crimes. It 
may seem to many a harsh measure, to forbid by law 
what they esteem the agreeable stimulation caused by 
the use of intoxicating drinks; but, when society has 
advanced to a higher plane of cultured civilization by 
stamping out the crime of intoxication, with all its bru- 
talizing consequences, the proposition to allow the use 
of intoxicants, and thus to debauch the rising pure gen- 
eration, would shock the community quite as much as 
would a proposition now to restore the former impunity 
for breaches of trust, and to place the vast accumulations 
of capital in public institutions, as well as the funds of 
private individuals, at the mercy of those entrusted with 
them; so that they could do with them as they please, 
without the fear of criminal prosecution for the breach 
of their trust by embezzlement. 

Intoxication having been handed down to us as a relic 
of ancient Oriental heathenism, being described in the 
Vedas, the oldest religious books of the Aryan race, as a 
part of the ceremonial worship of a god of intoxication, 
called Soma in those books, Dionysos by the Greeks, and 
Bacchus by the Romans, a strong effort for its abolition 



186 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

is a plain duty of the integral organ, or republic of public 
charity, the integral organ of Christian society that is 
charged with the work of moral reform. 

But, while the republic of public charity, to aid its 
practical efforts and moral suasion to this end, is entitled 
to call upon the government to perform its duty in this 
respect by the enactment of proper criminal legisla- 
tion, it is equally entitled to require it to abstain from 
interference with the proper work of the integral organ 
of public charity, either by illegal and extravagant per- 
version of public funds, contributed for governmental 
purposes, to ill-advised and pernicious almsgiving, as in 
pensions not fairly earned; or by enforcing with the 
power of the government the pretensions of one class 
of citizens demanding, as sturdy beggars, gratuitous con- 
tributions from the rest. For neither are alms illegally 
lavished from an overflowing treasury, nor are contri- 
butions from the poor exacted by governmental force for 
the benefit of the craving rich, charity, and as little 
are they justice; but they tend not only to pauperize 
the masses, but also to demoralize the whole of the 
community. 

Intolerance, being the greatest enemy to charity, 
should be altogether banished from the whole integral 
organ, or republic of charity. The different charitable 
and benevolent associations in each of the five general 
classes of associations that are assigned, respectively, for 
relieving the strain and facilitating the normal work of 
each of the five integral organs of society, should then 
combine in the general organization of its class, without 
regard to the religious distinctions prevalent in the 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 187 

separate associations. This action would produce a pow- 
erful concentration of charitable force in each of five 
parallel lines of charitable effort. These lines, by an 
extension of liberal culture, with increasing human sym- 
pathy, according to the general drift of the First Princi- 
ple, can then be drawn, by the attraction of mutual love, 
to converge to one center of integral charitable power. 
This could be made to bear harmoniously, at once, by 
instruction, moral and religious inspiration, industrial 
employment, material aid with friendly encouragement, 
and governmental justice, on the eradication of the roots 
of immorality and crime, sprung from uncultured mono- 
theistic idolatry, and growing from the soil of igno- 
rance, irreligious, immoral, unsympathetic social conver- 
sation, destitution, and the enticing impunity of gross 
offenders. 

The present lack of organization is most important in 
the class of charitable associations intended to co-operate 
with the government. One branch of these would aid 
the ultimate purpose of the government by converting 
the punishment into the reformation of criminals; while 
another branch would promote, in practical social inter- 
course, the general cultivation of the social ideals, by 
providing first-rate, aesthetic, rational, and cheap public 
entertainments. 

It will then be seen that charity is as paramount as 
the apostle describes it; and that, by completely organ- 
izing it, society will thoroughly humanize and reform 
itself. 

80. In the republic of government the practical error 
of faulty, organization not only prevails in its action as 



188 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

a whole, by its usurping functions of the other integral 
organs; but also both by the absence of normal organi- 
zation and by the prevalence of abnormal organization in 
each of its four partial organs, and in its extraordinary 
undenominational governmental representative assembly, 
or convention. The usurpation by it of functions of 
other integral organs has been explained. The partial 
organs of the government, as before mentioned, are (a) 
its political parties; (b) its ordinary governmental legis- 
lature; (c) its body of executive officers, and (d) its 
legal profession. 

81. (a) Political parties are the outward mechanism 
of the people's collective thought, leading to their col- 
lective practical action. They are based on the truism 
that every question has two sides, while some questions 
have more than two. Every struggle of political parties 
involves a public debate, in which each party embraces 
one side of the leading question of immediate and con- 
trolling public interest, and brings into the general dis- 
cussion all pertinent arguments in support of its side; 
so that every individual citizen, by giving due attention 
to the arguments of all the political parties, can determine 
understandingly the side with which he agrees, and can 
then give practical effect to his determination by his vote. 

As political parties, with the First Principle, have all 
principles in common, the questions on which political 
parties differ cannot be questions of principle; but must 
be applications of principle, or practical measures. For 
the same reason, political parties as distinguished from 
factions, must be honorable associations; and as normal 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 189 

associations, each must have as its end the general wel- 
fare of the public. 

It must be remembered that the people can act col- 
lectively otherwise than as political parties. There are 
questions which, in private judgment, can have more 
than one side — as questions regarding action towards a 
public enemy, or the discharge of public obligations; but 
which, in their public aspect, can have but one proper 
issue, can lead to but one set of patriotic measures. 
There are also elections held for public offices that are 
entirely unconnected with the questions debated by 
political parties. There are likewise periods when the 
proper work of existing political parties, or of those 
which have chiefly divided the public, seems, by the final 
adoption or rejection of their respective practical meas- 
ures, to be accomplished; and when, accordingly, the pub- 
lic attention, looking away from those measures, and from 
the parties which have supported or contested them, is 
variously directed either to questions hitherto regarded 
as of secondary importance, but now claiming the first 
rank of public interest; or to questions newly emerging 
on the horizon of the boundless and ever moving sea of 
public debate; so that individuals, without regard to 
their former political affiliations, will be grouped around 
these new questions, and will form new parties for the 
support or rejection, respectively, of the practical meas- 
ures which these questions suggest. In all these cases 
the people will be compelled, for a time, to act independ- 
ently of the organization of any political party, and 
entirely upon their own individual responsibility. Thus 



190 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

we see the limit to which the proper action of political 
parties extends, and beyond which it cannot go. 

The organization of a political party, like that of 
every other large association, is designed to produce the 
intelligent and concerted action of its members. Its 
intelligent action can only be promoted by the free inter- 
course and conference of its members. Its concert of 
action can only be effected by means of fair representa- 
tion, by reliable delegates, duly authorized to act for it 
by its primary meetings, and uniting in a central repre- 
sentative meeting for deliberation and joint action. 

The prevalent abuses of the organizations of political 
parties are two-fold. In the first place, no provision is 
made for the free public intercourse and habitual con- 
ference with each other of the members of each party, 
in their primary neighborhoods, whenever so disposed. 
Hence, the individuals composing the masses of a party 
hardly ever meet each other except on the day of an 
election, and then only to ratify by their votes the action 
taken in their name by a few persons without actually 
consulting them. It is probable, that this abuse has 
arisen from the fact that, in the beginning of a political 
party, a few persons, by their strenuous advocacy of its 
measures, and by their untiring activity in executing its 
behests, acquire, as they deserve, its almost unbounded 
confidence, and are almost exclusively entrusted with the 
management of its affairs; and that afterwards, in vari- 
ous ways, other persons succeed to the position and 
authority of these original managers, without having the 
same titles to the party's regard. Thus, the masses of 
the party are led to take final action by their vote, without 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 191 

previously taking together any preparatory counsel. In 
the next j)lace, this abuse leads to the formation within the 
party of the other consequential, or rather connate and 
twin abuse, of a non-representative governing, or despotic, 
ring. The ring is formed by the most ancient despotic 
device of governing the many by the few. Consultation 
on the general affairs of the party being dispensed with, 
the attendance on the primary meetings is small, and can 
always be controlled by a few trained retainers in the 
interest of a smaller few, constituting the ring. Such 
are the prevalent two-fold abuses of the organization of 
political parties. 

The obvious remedy for both of these abuses is to 
provide in each neighborhood, or smallest locality in 
which primary political meetings are held, convenient 
houses with separate rooms, as permanent places in 
which, at all seasons, the members of each political 
party may meet by themselves for consultation and 
counsel in advance of the regular periods for making 
nominations of candidates, and for elections; so that the 
general body of members, the militia, of each party, 
may have an opportunity both to become acquainted 
with each other's views, and to be well informed of all 
significant movements having a political bearing, whether 
within or without the party; and thus to be quite as 
well prepared as the trained bands of the ring, not only 
for sending reliable delegates to the nominating con- 
ventions, but also for casting their votes at the general 
elections. 

The arrangement of these neighborhood houses, and 
of corresponding central houses, the rules for appor- 



192 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

tioning their apartments to the different political par- 
ties, for loaning them, by courtesy, to other associations 
and to the pnblic for occasional meetings, and the pro- 
priety of furnishing them with books and papers, need 
not detain us. 

The importance of encouraging the conference of the 
members of a political party in its several neighborhoods, 
by providing the proper means for it, will be apparent, 
when the magnitude of the public evils caused by the 
ring, and brought about by the want of those conven- 
iences, is considered. 

The First Principle, and the social contract founded 
upon it, the public conscience, and the private con- 
science of each individual, all teach that it is the duty 
of every citizen towards his fellow citizens to act, and 
therefore to vote, honestly. He is bound to vote with 
his best and most deliberate judgment, intelligently, if 
he can; but at all events honestly. Montesquieu, in his 
book entitled " Spirit of the Laws," published a little 
before the middle of the eighteenth century, asserts that 
the peculiar and distinguishing principle of a republic is 
virtue. 

This position has been abundantly proved by others. 
But the ring of a political party directly antagonizes the 
fundamental principle of the republic, by habitually 
engaging, and using for the accomplishment of its crim- 
inal ends, mercenary, that is dishonest, votes; thus cor- 
rupting the political life of the people, and thereby 
committing the highest political crime. For this action 
of the ring attacks and impairs the sovereignty of the 
people, a crime for which the people, in self-defense, are 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 193 

justified in inflicting the highest punishment. The legal 
action of the people is declared by the honest votes cast 
at an election; the ring undertakes to nullify and defeat 
the action of the people by dishonest votes. The ring 
thus engages in a conflict with the people, and it should 
be prepared, when clearly convicted, to suffer the penalty 
of its high crime. 

The bribes used by the ring to corrupt voters are of 
several different kinds. They are public offices, public 
contracts or jobs, and public legislation for private ben- 
efit, besides money directly paid as bribes to voters. 

The public offices in which the ring deals are of two 
classes. The first class are the leading elective political 
offices, by which the general policy and administration 
of the government are shaped. In disposing of these 
offices the worst and most insidiously demoralizing 
influence of the ring is developed. These offices form 
the legitimate career of all seeking political distinction 
among their fellow citizens, and the privilege of doing 
service to the public. They should be open to the fair 
competition of every honorable ambition, and especially 
to the generous aspirations of the young, who may be 
encouraged in their political aims by the sympathy, the 
approbation, and the public spirit of their neighbors. 
But the candidates for these offices are soon made aware, 
that unless they are willing to do disgraceful homage to 
the ring, by pledging their official action to serve its 
ends, they will meet its irresistible opposition. Hence, 
the ring, except in the case of strong personalities and 
great talents that have acquired a wide popularity inde- 



194 - SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

pendent of its influence, can use the promise of these 
offices to bribe aspirants. 

The other class of public offices used as bribes by the 
ring are those which have no connection with the avowed 
policy of any political party — this policy being usually 
based on national political questions — and which offices 
can be equally well administered for the interest of the 
public by any incumbent, otherwise properly qualified, 
without regard to his political opinions. Such are 
judicial offices, clerkships of the courts, sheriffalties, 
mayoralties of cities, and other leading municipal offices, 
besides the great array of purely ministerial executive 
offices that are disposed of by the ring as the spoils of 
party victory, in pursuance of its bargain with the class 
of leading elective political officers. Such of these non- 
political offices as are elective are disposed of by the ring 
in the same way as the class of elective political offices 
properly connected with political parties, and with the 
same exceptions, by prostituting and utilizing the organ- 
ization of political parties in elections that should be 
independent of it. The remaining offices of this class, 
being the purely ministerial executive offices that are 
conferred by the appointment of elective executive chiefs, 
are distributed according to the influence, and the ante- 
cedent bargains, of the ring with those chiefs, express or 
implied, concerning them. 

The resources of the ring for bribery by public con- 
tracts or jobs, have been much curtailed by the open 
public competition for them demanded by public opinion. 
But public legislation for private benefit continues to be 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. . 195 

an unmitigated source of public grievance and of wide- 
spread corruption. 

The money directly paid by the ring to bribe voters, 
and contributed in large sums by persons of great 
wealth, who also claim to be highly respectable, but who, 
if they have even a small measure of intelligence, must 
know that it will be expended for that purpose, is a foul 
insult to the majesty, as well as a bold attack upon the 
sovereignty, of the people. It may be, and it seems 
probable, that rings in both of the great political parties 
are guilty of this crime. If so, the honest members 
of both political parties should unite to bring the guilty 
to condign punishment. For, it must be repeated, that 
political parties, as distinguished from factions, are hon- 
orable associations. 

To check these briberies on the part of the ring, and to 
preserve equality among the members of political parties, 
the expenses of each party should be kept within narrow 
limits, and confined to strictly legitimate and necessary 
objects; should be defrayed by nearly equal and small 
contributions, or assessments upon every member able to 
pay them, and should be exactly recorded in a regular 
system of accounts; nor should any member be allowed 
to impose obligations on his fellow members by larger 
contributions; nor should any candidate be expected 
to pay more than any other member of the party towards 
the expenses of an election held to promote the views 
and interests of the party. 

When the ring performs its work, its leaders are rarely 
seen. Its common members are indistinguishable from 
the crowd. For all that are not within it, the ring is 



196 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

invisible, impersonal, a mere chimera of the imagina- 
tion, a thing " without a local habitation or a name." 
Yet, in reality, it is an ubiquitous, despotic institution, 
exerting upon political parties vast, oppressive, degrad- 
ing and maliguant power. 

The ring, as it uses dishonorable means, does not 
belong to the party, but is a potent unseen faction Avithin 
it, — a baleful parasitic growth. It preys upon the vitals 
of the party; and it compels those portions of it which it 
cannot corrupt to become, however reluctantly, its tools, 
by voting for its nominees, on what is called the party's 
ticket. 

The registration, however exact, of voters, and the 
secret deposit, however guarded, of votes, are no protection 
against either the legion of bribed actually registered 
voters, or the unlimited number of unregistered votes, at 
the command of the ring, while it controls the machinery 
of the party's organization. There can be no purity of 
election, no party action at once honorable and efficient, 
until the ring, the despotic, non-representative scheme to 
rule by force or fraud the many by the few, is extinguished. 
Nor can this be done except by abolishing dishonesty, 
with the present facilities for dishonesty, in politics. 

It is idle to inveigh against the ring. It thrives upon 
maledictions. Its evil fame invites, by the hope of its 
wicked aid, the strong support of the unscrupulous hosts 
that seek by ignoble means the ends, either of sordid 
avarice, or of soaring, as well as of groveling, ambition. 

The ring works in darkness, by preparing secretly, in 
advance of the primary meetings, their attendance and 
their action. Its secrecy is its strength. The only way 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 197 

to destroy the ring, therefore, is to throw the glare of day 
upon its operations. This can be done by permanently 
locating the primary meetings in the smallest local 
neighborhoods, and providing, in the way before described, 
architectural conveniences for the habitual public inter- 
course of the honest masses of the party in the intervals 
between the formal primary meetings which transact the 
local business of the party. Thus, when these meetings 
take place, every man knowing his neighbor and his 
neighbor's views, and no opportunity being presented for 
secret machinations, the masses of the party, acting with 
full knowledge of what the occasion demands, can easily 
overcome, by a fair majority vote, in these probably full, 
zealous and instructed meetings, the drilled few of the 
ring. 

Although political parties now are chiefly national, 
they may become, for different objects, Interrace, inter- 
national, state or provincial, and municipal. 

82. (b) The governmental legislature is virtually a 
union of committees elected, respectively, by the different 
political parties, and authorized to meet together for 
joint action ; and by such action to bind, as public agents, 
or representatives, the whole people. The action of the 
legislature expressing the common resolutions of the peo- 
ple, and resulting from the conference of their authorized 
agents, is in form as well as in substance a public con- 
tract, and, like all contracts, requires for its validity 
perfect good faith. 

Hence, the remarks made before concerning the ab- 
normal action of political parties, and the elimination 



198 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

from them of the pernicious influence of the ring, apply- 
to the legislature. 

Governmental legislatures have different local spheres. 
While in theory they may be Interrace and international, 
they are, in fact, national, state or provincial, and 
municipal, the latter embracing rural as well as urban 
districts. 

The defects in the organization of the system of gov- 
ernmental legislatures are conspicuous in the absence of 
such legislatures for local spheres that greatly need them. 
The connected system of graduated local legislatures may 
be called the system of home rule. 

The principle of home rule is, that the inhabitants, or 
citizens, of every local sphere, from a neighborhood to a 
nation or a race, are competent to determine by legislation 
all questions relating exclusively to their sphere. Under 
this principle, there can be no conflict of proper or normal 
legislation. 

France and the British Empire are examples of the 
violation of this rule. Both have too much central leg- 
islation for local affairs. France needs local legislatures 
for its departments, or provinces, and for its communes. 
The British Empire requires local legislatures, or parlia- 
ments, for England as well as for Ireland, Scotland, and 
"Wales, and for some of its municipal districts, both urban 
and rural, and especially for the large municipal district 
of London, which is most unjustly and unaccountably, 
in view of its vast intrinsic power, deprived of home rule 
in its exclusively local affairs. 

In the United States of America, home rule in practice 
is generally carried out. But some of the state courts 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 199 

have absurdly ignored the principle of home rule, by 
deciding that the municipal governments of large cities, 
as Baltimore and New York, are mere creatures of 
their state legislatures; whereas, according to that prin- 
ciple of law, the people of any municipal district have a 
perfect right to set up a municipal government for their 
exclusively local affairs, quite independent of the state 
government; while the people of the municipal district 
are subject to the state government in matters exclusively 
affecting the state. Hence, municipal constitutions, as 
distinguished from municipal charters, should be of co- 
ordinate authority with state constitutions, each in its 
respective sphere. Likewise Interrace and international 
legislatures are needed to settle Interrace and inter- 
national questions. 

Another defect in the organization of many govern- 
mental legislatures is the inequality of the numbers of 
the voters represented by the individual members of 
the legislature. 

Of this inequality of representation the most re- 
markable example is the Senate of the United States. 
The provision of the Constitution of the United States, 
which, in violation of the principle of representation, 
assigns two and only two representatives to each state, is a 
monumental survival, as slavery was, of ancient abuses 
which the framers of the Constitution were unable to 
overcome. It is a part of the ancient despotic system of 
governing the many by the few. It has made the Senate 
a blot on the political system of America, and should 
have been abolished with slavery, its twin political mon- 
strosity. 



200 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The provision in the Constitution of the United States 
forbidding its amendment in the matter of the represen- 
tation of the small as well as the large states by two 
members in the Senate, regardless of the difference in the 
population of the states, is, like slavery, a violation of 
legal and political principle, or of the higher law. It is 
a violation of the principle of representation, which 
demands approximate equality, so far as practicable, in 
the numbers represented by each delegate. As slavery 
was a violation of the principle of personal liberty, this 
provision of the Constitution is a violation of the princi- 
ple of representation involved in the principle of civil 
representative democracy, by which alone personal liberty 
can be effectually protected by the organic and con- 
certed action of the people. 

This provision of the Constitution, therefore, is illegal; 
and justice, as well as a proper sense of self-respect in all 
the states — for the exercise of illegal authority is more 
degrading in a moral point of view to him who exercises 
it than to him who is subjected to it — demands its elimi- 
nation by a proper amendment. Although it is a mere 
nullity, as illegal, public convenience requires that in the 
removal of it the forms of a regular constitutional amend- 
ment should be observed. 

Approximate equality of representation is all that can 
be reasonably required, and this can be easily attained. 
All unnecessary departures from it are violations of prin- 
ciple, and, like all violations of principle, they imply 
their own condemnation. They prevail so glaringly in 
some local legislatures in the United States, that they 
need no further remark, except to say that they are 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 201 

notoriously continued for the benefit of rings of the 
political parties. 

The abuse of governmental legislatures in legislating 
for the special advantage of individuals, as distinguished 
from the general public, has already been mentioned in 
connection with the rings of political parties; but it is 
also the result of a defect of the general governmental 
organization. For, if the government keeps strictly 
within its proper organization, it will not interfere with 
industrial affairs, which belong exclusively to the integral 
organ of industry, by which they should be regulated. 

But, as it cannot be denied that the government has 
the right to raise revenue necessary for its proper pur- 
poses by duties on imports, it should neutralize the inci- 
dental interference with industrial pursuits, caused by 
such duties, by adjusting them on a sliding scale; impos- 
ing the highest duties on articles produced abroad by the 
lowest rate of wages, and the lowest duties on articles 
produced abroad by the highest wages. Otherwise, the 
government, by the incidental protection of such duties 
to particular industries, not to speak of direct protection 
to them, would reverse the part played by the senti- 
mental and benevolent highwayman of romance, who 
remorselessly robbed the rich, but liberally bestowed his 
gains upon the poor; it would plunder the poor, who are 
the masses of the people, to enrich the wealthy. 

83. (c) The body of executive officers, in the civil ser- 
vice of the people, gives rise to great abuses on account of 
its defective organization. These abuses have been suffi- 
ciently indicated in what has been said concerning the 
rings in the political parties. They could be avoided by 



202 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

making the appointments to office dependent on exam- 
inations similar to those in the military service, with the 
same tennre of office, and privilege of promotion. 

In the military service, the abuses are those incident 
generally to standing armies, and in a less degree to 
standing navies; and they can only be cured by abol- 
ishing the standing army and navy, and by substituting 
for them a properly organized and trained militia, for 
land and sea service. The European governments would 
require a preliminary international, or even Interrace 
agreement for a general disarmament, before they could 
disband their, regular armies and navies. The United 
States of America would experience the same necessity, 
in regard to its navy; but no such difficulty need prevent 
them from substituting at once, for its regular army, the 
militia, mustering in small quotas from all the states and 
territories, for short terms of service, aggregating about 
the same number as the present regular army, to do the 
same duties, with the same organization, drill, and pay. 
Under proper regulations, the best material would volun- 
teer; and if only the best were accepted, the service 
would be a source of honor. 

Indeed, the illegal employment of the regular army 
in executing the Eeconstruction Act of Congress, is a 
sufficient warning that the change cannot be made too 
soon in the United States. 

84. (d) The legal profession also is prevented from 
doing effectually the duty it owes to the public by a 
defective organization. 

It is evident that the legal profession, or the profes- 
sional lawyers, those who give legal advice, prepare 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 203 

legal papers, argue and decide cases in court, should, 
on account of their common interest, as respects both 
each other and the public, be organized as a national 
and international, and in time, an Interrace guild. 

The legal guild would not be a close corporation, but 
its membership would be accorded with the utmost lib- 
erality to all qualified members of the public, and would 
include all the legal profession in a normal association. 

A notable defect of the partial organization of the 
legal profession of the United States of America, is that 
it is chiefly composed of bar associations of several cities, 
united as a national bar association; but that it is far 
from including all classes of the legal profession, or all 
the members of even one class. 

Similar defects occur in the partial organizations of 
the legal profession elsewhere. But all classes of the 
legal profession, — barristers, counselors, pleaders, convey- 
ancers, attorneys, solicitors, proctors, as well as judges 
— should be brought under one organization in each 
nation; so that these national organizations in each race 
may unite in an international organization, and the 
international organizations, in time, may combine to 
form an Interrace organization, whenever this shall be 
needed. 

In this way, the good, bad, and indifferent members 
of the legal profession will be brought under the uniform 
regulation and discipline of the majority, composed of its 
reputable members, for the equal benefit of the profes- 
sion and of the public. The legal profession would thus 
become a public guild and a normal association, seeking, 
besides the benefit of its members, the public welfare. 



204 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The association of all the members of the legal profes- 
sion in one organization, will afford opportunity for gen- 
eral public discussions, among them, of the great legal 
questions, as they successively arise, that must affect the 
decision of proposed public measures; and the general 
agreement of the legal profession on such questions 
would be a useful guide to the people. 

When the legal profession, in its judicial, or official, 
and in its lay, or practicing branch, shall be systematic- 
ally organized, its title to be considered as one of the 
partial organs of government, co-ordinate with the 
others, will be evident; and its legitimate influence on 
the conduct of public affairs will be clearly apparent, and 
fully acknowledged. For like each of the other partial 
organs of the government, the legal profession, in a par- 
ticular way, represents the people. 

The political parties are, and so represent, the people, 
bodily; the ordinary governmental legislature is directly 
or indirectly elected by the people, and so represents 
them; the body of executive officers represents the 
people, because in part elected by the people directly, 
and in part appointed indirectly by the people, as by 
those directly elected and authorized by the people to do 
so; while the legal profession, as a committee volunteer- 
ing to act for the rest of the people, in answering, dis- 
cussing and deciding questions of law, according to 
principle, and in preparing legal papers, is tacitly con- 
firmed by them, and in this way represents the people. 
Indeed, the legal profession is the people, so far as 
they choose to enter that profession, which is free to 
them, when they acquire the necessary qualifications; 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 205 

and the whole people are, to a certain extent, lawyers, 
inasmuch as they are continually considering and deter- 
mining, not professionally, but for themselves, the ques- 
tions of law that are involved in most of the practical 
measures of every-day life; while only in a few cases they 
apply for assistance to lawyers by profession. Besides, 
the official or judicial branch of the legal profession, for 
whom the lay branch are chiefly aids or assistants, are 
either directly elected by the people, or are indirectly 
appointed by them through elective executive officers. 

The legal profession, when fitly organized, should and 
could take care, by proper regulations, to raise the stand- 
ard of qualification of its members, by insisting on a 
preparation for them of liberal culture, leading to a 
supreme regard for principle. For it would require a 
preliminary study of the science of jurisprudence, the 
basis of which, as of every science, is the First Principle 
of the Semitic Philosophy. In its legal aspect, indeed, 
this First Principle, being, in fact, the basis of the 
original and continuing social contract, and hence of 
the general organization of society, of the resulting gen- 
eral organization of society's integral organ of govern- 
ment, and of the separate general organization of the 
government's partial organ, the legal profession, is most 
appropriately considered as the scientific foundation of 
jurisprudence. This First Principle of the Semitic Phil- 
osophy, and not the heathen Greek and Roman Stoic 
natural law, is the Christian natural law, sometimes 
called the higher law, the universal common law, the 
perfection of reason, or the law of God; being distin- 



206 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

guished, as divine and perfect sovereign equity, from 
human and imperfect positive law. 

Case law should be studied to pursue the development 
of legal principles realized in practice. The reports are 
mines in which principles, few and far between, are 
found, embedded in much poor ore and mere rubbish. 

When a principle, or rule, is evolved out of one or 
more cases, it must be established on grounds of reason, 
and then the principle, or rule, lives on independently of 
the cases; and the cases, except the few having a his- 
torical interest, may be consigned to oblivion. 

A rule, ignorantly adopted, not bottomed on reason, 
may, according to the debatable maxim "stare decisis" 
be called law, as the implied ground of contracts or 
other business presumably based on it; but when it is 
shown to be opposed to principle or reason, it must be 
disregarded, as conflicting with the higher law. 

Positive law, although in ancient heathen despotisms 
and in their modern imitations it appears in the form of 
a command, is in normal society that approximates to 
the scheme of civil representative democracy, a voluntary 
rule adopted by the people for their social co-operation; 
and thus it partakes of the nature of a contract. Ac- 
cording to the end of the co-operation it is designed to 
promote, it will differ in each of the integral organs of 
society. Thus, there is an educational positive law, a 
religious positive law, an industrial positive law, a chari- 
table positive law, and a governmental positive law. 
Positive law also has different degrees of generality; as 
municipal, national, international and Interrace. 






SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 207 

The positive law with which the legal profession is 
primarily concerned, is the governmental. But the skill 
it acquires in framing and interpreting governmental 
positive law, may be called into requisition in regard to 
the positive law of the other integral organs of society. 
The fact also that the legal profession is required to be 
versed in the discovery, maintenance, and application of 
principles, in connection with • positive law, causes its 
members of reputation to be called upon for their opinion 
and advocacy in all social questions involving principle, 
not only in all the other partial organs of the govern- 
ment, but also in all the other integral organs of society. 

Thus, by the suitable organization of the legal pro- 
fession, its influence and its usefulness, by its advocacy 
of principle, will be increased to so great an extent, that 
a leading part will be assigned to it in that general 
development of the First Principle which must bring 
about the next impending great social revolution. Nor 
would the peculiar work of the legal profession, the intro- 
duction of uniformity, system, and brevity in the general 
written positive law, and the extension of the field of 
scientific jurisprudence, to embrace the races of man- 
kind, as the units of universal society, with rational 
Interrace rights and duties, be the least of the benefits 
which that reformation would produce. 

85. Having concluded our examination of the defect- 
ive organization of the four partial organs of the gov- 
ernment, that constitute its denominational organization, 
we will proceed to the consideration of its defective unde- 
nominational organization, or its extraordinary unde- 
nominational governmental convention; which, in respect 



208 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

to the special objects of its call, and according to its gen- 
eral or local sphere, is authorized to exert the reserved 
sovereign power of the people. 

The undenominational organization, or convention, 
of the government is general or local. Its usual gen- 
eral form needs little change. Its varying local form 
is so defective that it must be regarded as merely 
inchoate, and as needing great improvement. 

(1) It should be observed that its general form is sel- 
dom called into action. But these occasions are com- 
monly preceded by so much general discussion, showing 
the necessity for a general convention, and designating 
the points which it will be called on to determine, that 
the people, without distinction of political parties, can 
readily assemble in primary meetings, in the usual places, 
and elect delegates to nominate members of the con- 
vention, who will then be elected in the usual way by 
the votes of the people. It seems, therefore, super- 
fluous here to suggest organic changes in the usual 
methods of conducting popular elections, since these 
methods will be as sufficient for the formation of an 
undenominational convention as for other purposes. 

A convention is called undenominational, when all the 
voters, at the same time, and irrespective of the gov- 
ernment's partial organs, which are denominational, vote 
for or against its call and proposed action. But while 
the political parties are denominational, and cannot 
properly divide their vote for or against a convention 
and its action according to their party lines, there may 
be pronounced differences of opinion in regard both 
to the necessity of a convention, and to its proper 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 209 

action; and the respective adherents of these different 
views may organize themselves in the usual way, for 
voting in concert both as to the call of a convention, 
and as to the members to be sent to it. State and 
national conventions are general; and so would be an 
international convention, as for the nations of Europe. 

(2) The local form of undenominational governmental 
organization should correspond, in a civil representative 
democracy, with the government's denominational organ- 
ization, at least in its elective feature, except that the 
primary meetings should be undenominational. 

The convention exercising the local sovereignty of 
the people, should be elected by the people, for that pur- 
pose, in the locality concerned. 

But, in the United States of America, where local 
undenominational proceedings are of frequent occur- 
rence, regular forms are seldom met with, the bodies of 
men that assume to act with the authority of local unde- 
nominational governmental conventions, exercising the 
local sovereignty of the people, the so-called lynching 
companies, or vigilance committees, are mostly tumult- 
uary self-constituted crowds, collected from a compar- 
atively small neighborhood, and banded under a single 
leader; acting from righteous indignation caused by 
some gross outrage, and designing to execute upon the 
offender the swift justice which they believe the regular 
authorities of the government will either fail to apply, 
or unreasonably delay. 

The reform demanded for the undenominational con- 
ventions of local districts of the government, is, that 
they should be openly elected, upon due notice, from a 



210 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

district composed of several primary neighborhoods, and 
should proceed deliberately and publicly to exercise the 
reserved sovereign rights of the people for the district 
represented by the convention in the mode expressed or 
implied in its call. Such action then would be revo- 
lutionary, but legal. But it should carefully avoid the 
desultory and undignified disorder of a mob. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONCLUSION. 

rpHE special difficulties in the way of realizing the 
-*- general social reformation, with their remedies; the 
remedies being summed up in the general pursuit of the 
First Principle of the Semitic Philosophy. 

86. The logical effect of a revival of the Semitic 
philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, 
would evidently be a development of the knowledge of 
its First Principle, with a resulting general spread of 
liberal culture, and a consequent universal and radical 
social reformation, exhibited in each of the integral 
organs of society. 

In the integral organ, or republic, of letters and art, 
there would be an improved system of public education, 
intellectual, religious, moral, artistic, and industrial, be- 
ginning by means of the sensuous ideas, with early child- 
hood, and extending to the finished discipline of the 
universities. In the republic of the church there would 
be a normal general representative democratic religious 
association for divine service, including with liberality and 
toleration all monotheistic purely religious denominations, 
and excluding all Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan 
ecclesiastical governments. In the republic of industry 

there would be a normal general industrial organization, 

211 



212 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

with representatives from each of the four industrial 
classes, of capitalists, employers, working-men, and con- 
sumers; the now lacking organization of the consumers 
being the slumbering industrial force, deeply interested, 
and fully able, when aroused, to shake off from the com- 
munity the shackles of the trusts and of all the other 
abnormal industrial associations. In the republic of 
charity there would be a general co-operating organiza- 
tion of all classes of charitable and benevolent associa- 
tions, without distinction as to their religious denomi- 
nations. Finally, in the republic of government, there 
would be a harmonious development of its four partial 
organs — its political parties, its legislature, its body of 
executive officers, and its legal profession; the latter 
effectively organized, with its official or judicial branch 
and its lay or practicing branch, and with a universal 
and uniform system of law inaugurated and applied by 
it; both of positive law and of principle, Interrace, as 
well as international, national and municipal. 

It seems that a fitting conclusion of the present dis- 
cussion, therefore, would be to point out the principal 
difficulties that now obstruct the attainment of a uni- 
versal social reformation, and to suggest the proper 
means for their removal. 

87. Of such difficulties there are three, the strong 
tendency of which to check the normal progress of 
society clearly marks them, in this connection, for special 
notice. They are, (1) the general and almost universal 
prevalence of an unsuspected mode of monotheistic 
idolatry in all the monotheistic nations; (2) the abuse 
made of the vast mass of printed books and journals, to 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 213 

restrict original, free and energetic, instinctive thought; 
and (3) the undue respect paid to ancestors and predeces- 
sors, leading men to tolerate, cherish, and imitate, rather 
than to correct, the faults of those who went before 
them. These difficulties and their appropriate remedies 
will be briefly considered. To the first in order of these 
difficulties, if not also the first in importance, we now 
proceed — the prevailing monotheistic idolatry. 

88. (1) In the creeds and dogmas of the largest 
denominations in all the monotheistic churches, Chris- 
tian, Jewish, and Mohammedan, describing the action 
of God towards sinful transgressors, there is an unmis- 
takable element of unjust, despotic cruelty, which, if 
true, would mark the character of God as immoral; but 
which, as false, creates in imagination, in the place of 
the true God, a monotheistic false idol. 

The tendency of idol worship to promote crime, by 
giving the sanction of its idol to the immorality it rep- 
resents, is evident. The brutalizing tendency, there- 
fore, of the prevailing monotheistic idolatry cannot be 
doubted; and to it can be traced the cruel practice of 
offensive war and conquest, involving all the highest 
crimes. Drunkenness, also, is a moral degradation 
derived from a similar idolatrous source; it having been 
originally a part of idolatrous worship. It widely pre- 
vails in Christianity, and to a less extent, perhaps, in 
Judaism; while, to the disgrace of both, in the other- 
wise inferior system of Mohammedanism, it is so far from 
being licensed, that it is practically suppressed, by sup- 
pressing, not the sale, but the use, of intoxicating drinks. 



214 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The remedy for monotheistic idolatry, and all other 
idolatry, whether Christian, Jewish, or Mohammedan, is 
to teach God's true character as free from passion, and 
with its parts or attributes co-operating with each other 
to form one consistent integral whole of justice and love, 
or mercy, according to the original Christian concep- 
tion of his universal Fatherhood. This teaching must 
exclude all idolatry. 

Man's life surely tends to accord with the object of 
his worship. If that object, however called, is in fact an 
immoral monotheistic idol, his life will be immoral; and 
it will be more easily accounted for by his idol, than by 
an imagined original sin of his first progenitor. But if 
the object of his worship is the one personal, perfect 
God, his life will be cultured by his knowledge of God, 
with or without the learning of books, and it will be 
virtuous. For worship as required by reason in general, 
and by religion in particular, is first the knowledge, 
and then the imitation, of the one personal, perfect 
God. The responsibility, therefore, of the largest mono- 
theistic religious denominations, from their teaching of 
the cruel and hence immoral character of God, for the 
crime prevalent in monotheistic nations, is manifest. 

89. (2) The next difficulty in the way of a general 
social reformation, by means of the First Principle of 
the Semitic philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom 
of God, is the abuse, or misuse, of the present stock and 
the current accumulations of the productions of the 
press. The abuse of the enormous and increasing store 
of books and journals, is the failure to systematically 
criticise and use them. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 215 

To describe the universe, or any considerable part 
of it, fully in writing, would make a mass of books 
almost as large as the universe or the part described. 
To write down all the thoughts that pass through men's 
minds, even for a year, would form a bulk of written 
matter almost equally large. The books and journals 
thus written would be worse than useless, although they 
would contain all science, all philosophy, all poetry, all 
literature. They would leave no place in the universe 
for man and his work. 

Selection of the contents, and limitation of the pro- 
duction of books and journals, are evidently necessary. 
Equally necessary are selection and limitation in the use 
of books and journals actually produced. For few of 
them are altogether good and useful; while some of them 
are absolutely worthless, and many are positively bad. 
Some betray ignorance; others show intentional mis- 
representation; some present vice under a veil; others 
display it in all its nakedness; some disseminate error; 
others elaborate crime. 

In the schools of all kinds, the books should not only 
be select, but they should be supplemented by the sen- 
suous ideas; in other words, by object lessons, or speci- 
mens of nature and of art in museums and art galleries; 
and by the work of the skilled hand directed by the 
trained eye of the student in workshops and laboratories. 
In this way the repression of original or instinctive 
thought by books, will be prevented. 

After leaving school, the life of man, in outward 
action and inward thought, is guided not only by his 
past attainment of knowledge, but also by passing events, 



216 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

new discoveries and inventions; partly observed by him- 
self, but mostly recorded in books and journals, and to 
a great extent in newspapers; and it is highly important 
for him to know in which of them to look for reliable 
information. 

Language, as an incident of the sensuous ideas, 
designed to externalize, or, as it were, to express them, 
and thereby to communicate, record and preserve them, 
their combinations and results, is one of the oldest, and 
perhaps is the greatest and the most useful, of man's 
inventions. It is the most effective means of artistic as 
well as of scientific expression, and it should, as such, be 
carefully cultivated. It far excels painting and sculpt- 
ure, representing not, like them, single scenes and 
actions; but expressing in a brief compass the whole 
integral action of man's spirit, his own ideas, notions, 
conceptions, judgments, feelings, past deeds and future 
purposes, and those of other persons; as in science, 
history, contracts, positive laws. 

While, for the most part, thought disembarrassed from 
language, as its artificial, outward, mediate instrument, 
is carried on freely, and instinctively, with perfect ease 
and certainty, and with almost infinite rapidity, by 
means of its natural, inward, immediate, and orig- 
inal instruments, the sensuous ideas; the artistic quali- 
ties of language should be judiciously utilized. To 
promote the excellence of books and journals, the use 
of language should be taught as a fine art, and as the 
highest art. 

But, however well written books and journals may be, 
still, owing to man's limited capacity for digesting them, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 217 

some means should be provided to enable every person to 
pick out those which are suited to his needs. For this 
purpose,, the institution of the national or international 
(t Public Commissioners of Criticism," belonging to the 
complete organization of the republic of letters and art, 
would, when put in operation, be admirably suited. 

It would pass in review, in a personal examination, 
or by skilled assistants, the whole body of current publi- 
cations; giving in a regular periodical, shortly after their 
appearance, brief notices of their excellences and defects 
to the public; and making different short lists of old 
and new publications best suited, respectively, for the 
reading and study of persons in different situations of 
life. 

Of course, every person would be left free to delve for 
himself in the general mine of letters for such hidden 
treasures as it may contain. But for the general public, 
not having the means, the time, nor the enterprise for 
such an investigation, the systematic action of the "Pub- 
lic Commissioners of Criticism " would be found a valu- 
able aid. 

It is evident, on the whole, that the irregular and 
unassisted use of books and other publications, must 
retard and contract the liberal culture that would result 
from persistent application of the knowledge of the First 
Principle of the Semitic philosophy. 

90. (3) Passing now to the undue respect paid to 
ancestors and predecessors, as the third one of the prin- 
cipal difficulties before enumerated that obstruct the 
attainment of a universal social reformation, we have to 
remark, in the first place, that it participates with the 



218 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

other two in the vice of retarding the free development 
of the knowledge of the First Principle of the Semitic 
philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom of God; 
and, in the second place, that it partakes of that super- 
stitious worship of dead ancestors, which formed a part 
of the ancient heathenism, practiced formerly by the 
white race. 

It is a very old experience that very great men often 
have very great faults. In this centennial season, 1889, 
commemorating the inauguration of the Constitution of 
the United States, we are reminded that not only very 
great men have had their faults, but also very good men; 
and that while we admire the greatness and the virtues of 
these men, we should neither be blind to their infirmi- 
ties, nor let our veneration for their exalted qualities 
seduce us into an imitation, or even an excuse, of their 
errors. 

True conservatism is of principle. All true conserva- 
tism must concur in developing and upholding the First 
Principle of the Semitic philosophy, or doctrine of the 
Kingdom of God. All true progress is the improvement, 
or evolution, both of the expression, or dogmatic state- 
ment, and of the practical realization of principle. 
While the First Principle, therefore, as the basis of all 
true conservatism, stands fast forever, reaching un- 
changed back into all the past, and forward into all 
future time, the expression of that principle in science 
and in the fine arts, with its practical realization in 
society and in the useful arts, must, as the even manifes- 
tation, or evolution, of man's inward and outward immor- 
tal life and growth, present a changing scene of eternal 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 219 

progress. Hence, true conservatism and true progress 
are identical. 

Error and crime and all unskilful work are depart- 
ures from principle; and as such they are purely per- 
sonal, resulting from personal ignorance and personal 
depravity. They are communicated and perpetuated by 
personal false instruction and evil example. 

True social progress, as well as true social conserva- 
tism, is a return to principle and a constant adherence to 
it, not only with personal repentance, but also with a due 
personal regard to its absolute truth and universal social 
application and obligation. 

Experience shows that it is easier for the majority of 
mankind, not instructed in correct methods of thought, 
to follow the tradition and the examples of past gen- 
erations, than independently to investigate and judge 
their truth and propriety. Hence results the unreason- 
ing obsequiousness of large masses of men to the false 
opinions and evil examples of their forefathers. The 
evident remedy for this evil is the liberal culture of the 
masses, which would enable them to appreciate the worth 
and the authority of principles, and to discriminate justly 
the true insight and the virtues of their ancestors from 
their errors and their faults. 

To establish, therefore, as the foundation of all in- 
struction, the First Principle of the Semitic philosophy, 
or doctrine of the Kingdom of God, involving all prin- 
ciples, would at once stop the evil of the unquestioning 
reception of dogmas and practices, however long de- 
scended, inherited from the past. For whatever dogma 



220 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

or practice conflicts with this First Principle must be 
false and of evil tendency, and will be seen to be such. 

91. The acknowledgment of the First Principle will 
clear the air in the discussion of many highly important 
public questions; sweeping away the misty grounds of 
the differences of opinion among good and able men; 
correcting the errors that originated in former genera- 
tions, and leaving the truth of the matters in dispute 
clearly visible. Two of these questions, of very ancient 
origin, and connected with the church, will be briefly 
considered. They owe their importance to the new and 
aggressive relations of intolerance recently assumed by 
the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church to the 
masses of the people of the United States, of all religions; 
and the mention of them here affords an appropriate 
occasion for recognizing the very different spirit of relig- 
ious tolerance manifested with chivalrous daring by the 
early Roman Catholic colonists of Maryland, who, in 
striking contrast to the religious intolerance of Puritans 
and Cavaliers, north and south of them, only long after- 
wards converted to an equal spirit of tolerance, boldly 
proclaimed what was then a new as well as generous doc- 
trine of religious liberty. 

(a) One of these questions is involved in the public 
controversy now carried on regarding the expediency of 
religious instruction in the public schools; and one of 
the disputants, Cardinal Gibbons, says: "Religious 
knowledge is as far above human science as the soul is 
above the body, as Heaven is above earth, as eternity is 
above time." This is from the mediaeval, ecclesiastical 
standpoint. Another of the disputants, from another 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 221 

standpoint, says: " Religious truth is revealed in alle- 
goric and symbolic form, and is to be appreciated, not 
merely by the intellect, but by the imagination and the 
heart. The analytic understanding is necessarily hostile 
and skeptical in its attitude towards religious truth, and 
the mingling of secular and religious instruction culti- 
vates flippant and shallow reasoning on sacred themes." 
[See Bait. Sun Supplement, July 11, 1889.] 

But as it has been proved that every principle, in the 
sense of a law of Nature, or a law of God, is a uniform- 
ity of the action of God, it follows that the uniformity, 
or simultaneous, correlated complexity, of these uni- 
formities, must constitute a First Principle, from which 
all the special principles, both of religious and of secular 
truth, or knowledge, must be deduced. Hence, religious 
truth and secular truth are derived from the same First 
Principle, are co-ordinate, reciprocal, and inseparable; 
and they must both be taught, by the same methods of 
demonstration and verification; whence it follows that 
they can and ought to be taught in the same school. 

It remains true, however, that society, when perfectly 
organized, should assign the charge of all the schools to 
a separate, appropriate and universal agency, or integral 
organ, the republic of letters and art, numerically 
identical and co-ordinate alike with the state and the 
church, and equally independent of both; and that 
while the state has temporarily volunteered, on account 
of its financial resources, to support the schools, in the 
absence of an efficient organization of the republic of 
letters and art, it should administer them under its 
general direction, as its trustee, with due regard to civil 



222 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

and religious liberty, and for the equal benefit, both of 
a normal representative democratic state, and of a nor- 
mal tolerant universal church. 

92. (b) Again, the observance of this First Principle 
will also make clear the grounds of the still unsettled 
controversy about the supreme temporal government, 
between the hierarchy, or ecclesiastical body, on one 
hand, that absolutely ruled the whole mediaeval Christian 
church, and still nominally rules the greater part of it, 
and on the other the modern state. The ultimate 
ground of this controversy, on the part of the hierarchy, 
is virtually the same untenable position taken by it, in 
opposition to the First Principle, when it claims the 
control of the schools. For, wrongly assuming that the 
religious duties of man are more important, more con- 
ducive to the welfare of the soul in this world and the 
next, than his secular duties, and that they are, therefore, 
designed to control the secular, and thus to have in an 
alleged superior sphere the special care and supervision of 
the hierarchy; while secular duties belong to the state, 
which is limited to them, and which must partake of 
their subordinate condition, — the hierarchy claims that 
by undertaking to regulate and enforce the religious 
duties, and to thereby exercise a higher function than the 
state, it is in dignity and in authority paramount to it, 
and thereby entitled to rule it. But, while the First 
Principle necessarily leads to the service of God by the 
people, in the responsible performance by them of both 
religious and secular duty, in the light and inspiration of 
civil and religious liberty, and of liberal culture, it also 
absolutely encourages them to freely use their own 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 223 

powers of thought and of practical action, for which 
they are responsible, in rationally governing themselves. 
Hence, it as positively discountenances any self-enslave- 
ment of the people by submission to a despotic or 
paternal ecclesiastical government over them by the 
hierarchy, as any subjection of them, to any other non- 
representative government over them by a political 
despot or ring. 

For, according to the First Principle, which is practical 
as well as speculative, the ideal, at once, of all duty and 
of all truth, and which is the part that God faithfully 
performs in the original and continuing social contract 
between God and man, constantly consummated without 
words, and designed for the help and blessing of all 
mankind, — man's religious duties and his secular duties, 
being man's part in that contract, are equally as import- 
ant in their exercise as they are inseparable in their 
source. Every man, in consideration of God's help, 
which he accepts in that principle, is bound to co-operate 
with him by the performance alike of all religious and 
of all secular duties; they being demanded for helping 
and blessing, according to God's love and purpose, all 
other men. 

Although to commune and take counsel with God, 
either alone, or while encouraging others to do the same 
in large or small assemblies, convened for that purpose, 
is the first part of man's religious duty, yet the sequel of 
that duty must issue, according to his means and oppor- 
tunities, by the force of that principle, not only in occa- 
sional benevolent and philanthropic enterprises, but also 
in such a just and liberal regular conduct of his secular 



224 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

affairs, as will aim to promote as well the rightful 
interests of his fellow-men as his own. Nor will 
man's part in the performance of any secular duty he 
properly completed without religiously seeking for that 
purpose the aid of divine wisdom in the due contem- 
plation of that principle, in the doctrine of the Kingdom 
of God. 

The First Principle of the Semitic philosophy affords 
as little ground to the hierarchy of the mediaeval 
Christian church for establishing non-representative eccle- 
siastical government over the people, or any portion of 
them, as for interfering with the public schools; indeed, 
it gives as little right to the head of that hierarchy, the 
Christian Pope, as to the Mohammedan "commander of 
the Faithful," to assert despotic " temporal power " over 
the people. For this principle necessarily implies the 
principle of the sovereignty of the people, while it im- 
poses on the people the duty and the responsibility of 
maintaining a moral social order, and a normal social 
organization. 

Yet, after the early Christian communities had each 
adopted as the germ and the undenominational type of 
modern society, or of modern civilization, the form of 
the association of Jesus with his Apostles, which he called 
the general assembly of the people, or, as it were, the 
town meeting, the congregation, of the people — by the 
Greek name " ecclesia," — and after they had developed 
from the First Principle a distinctively and peculiarly 
Christian representative or synodal constitution, serving 
as a bond of unity to combine them into one Christendom, 
and based on the sovereignty of the people; it is a 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 225 

remarkable phenomenon, deserving grave consideration, 
and showing the seductive and demoralizing force of 
ancient heathen examples, that the hierarchy or clergy 
of the Eoman church of Christendom, in the Middle 
Ages, by means of a separate Eoman ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, — which ignored the First Principle of the Semitic 
philosophy, or Kingdom of God, and its principle of the 
sovereignty of the people, but was exactly modeled after 
the ancient heathen despotic Roman empire, and was 
based on the submissive degradation of the people by the 
power of heathen superstition and ignorance, miscalled 
the spiritual power, — actually succeeded in acquiring 
over the whole of western Christendom a supreme, des- 
potic, and universal temporal dominion. 

While, however, the pagan Roman emperors, followed 
in their despotic rule by so-called Christians, claimed that 
the right to rule and make laws was conferred upon them 
by a law made in regular form, the lex regia, by the 
people, (Dig. i., iv.); and they thereby admitted the 
original sovereignty of the people, the hierarchy does 
not deign to refer to the people at all as the source of its 
power. It asserts (Gratian's Deer. Dist. xcvi., c. x.) 
that "there are two things by which principally the world 
is governed, the sacred authority of the pontiffs, and the 
royal power. " It also irreverently pretends that the 
authority and power of the pontiffs is directly granted to 
them as vicars or vicegerents of God; a pretense suffi- 
ciently refuted by the notoriously immoral character of 
more than one of those pontiffs, — a character which could 
not, without blasphemy, be considered as belonging to 
God's representative among men. 



226 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

The famous simile of Gregory VII., comparing the 
popedom to the sun, and the temporal empire to the 
moon, while exhibiting his contracted ecclesiastical view 
in this respect, displays his want both of far prophetic 
vision, and of rational appreciation of the social duty 
imposed upon man individually and collectively by the 
moral force of the First Principle of the Semitic philos- 
ophy. For, blinded by the contemplation of two shining 
motes, as it were, of the solar system, with the larger and 
brighter of which he proudly identifies himself, he fails 
to see the boundless stellar universe of the people. 

The ecclesiastical government of the Eoman hierarchy 
is evidently a gnostic scheme of Magian or Manichean 
Orientalism, regarding the people as contemptible, and 
fit only to be deluded by Magian arts. The purely relig- 
ious and the moral tenets and practices of the laity of the 
medieval Christian church, and of the modern church 
that has succeeded it, are not here discussed or ques- 
tioned. They are derived more from tradition among the 
laity, than from the hierarchy, which occupied itself for 
many generations more with government than with 
teaching; and then, having neglected the First Principle 
of the Semitic philosophy, the hierarchy fashioned its 
dogmas after the heathen philosophers of Greece. 

But, remarkable as are the distant heathen origin and 
the brilliant ambitious career of the ecclesiastical govern- 
ment of the Eoman hierarchy, still more memorable is 
the fact that it is dead, and has been dead more than a 
century, and yet is carried about unburied by the living 
church that it long ruled. It has succumbed gradually 
to successive revolutions that have developed, one after 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 227 

another, the speculative and practical elements of the 
First Principle; reviving thereby the original popular 
tradition of the Kingdom of God, or Christianity, and 
increasing the intelligence and the free instinctive thought 
of the people. It has yielded, namely, to the modern 
revival of letters, of science, of the fine and the industrial 
arts; to the organization of industrial guilds, of free 
cities, of the universities; to the representation of the 
Commons in the parliaments of England, Spain and other 
countries; to the Protestant reformation; to the Roman 
Catholic reformation of the council of Trent; to the 
English rebellion and revolution; to the American revo- 
lution, establishing, at last, the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple; and to the consequent French revolution, which, 
whatever else it did, gave a fresh impetus to the other 
revolutions by which it was preceded. 

If the ecclesiastical government of the Roman hierarchy 
were not now dead, it would surely put in operation the 
institution which it otherwise vainly invented with fiend- 
ish malignity for the terror, and torture, and destruction 
of those who actively, or in words, or in secret instinctive 
thought, opposed or doubted it. But the dungeons of 
the Inquisition are untenanted; its racks, its wheels, its 
deftly contrived machinery for inflicting exquisite tor- 
ture, are rusting from disuse; its autos-da-fe have ceased; 
the smoke of its burned victims no longer ascends bearing 
to just heaven the indignant protest of outraged humanity. 
Its cunning and hypocritical, as well as cruel and inhu- 
man inquisitors, immolating, with washed hands, their 
doomed victims by the hands of the subject and subor- 
dinate civil government, for the pretended glory of God, 



228 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

but really and* unquestionably, to maintain, by the rule 
of the ecclesiastical government, the authority of the 
sacerdotal order, — where are they? Dead, long ago. 

For Eoman Catholic Italy has raised a monument in 
Kome to Bruno, the simple man of letters, the innocent 
victim whom the Inquisition malignantly burned to death 
at the stake, in open defiance of the right of free thought 
by the people, and neither has the Inquisition stirred, 
nor has there been proclaimed a crusade. The ecclesi- 
astical government, therefore, with the Inquisition, must, 
indeed, be dead. The paper documents on which its 
claim to authority rested, though not repealed, as in 
candor they should be, are obsolete. Then peace to its 
ashes. This monument proves at once the downfall of 
the ecclesiastical government of the Roman Catholic 
church, and the liberty of its laity to elect their priests 
and bishops. 

Corresponding monuments, erected by Protestants, to 
the victims of the ignorant fanaticism of their predeces- 
sors, would greatly tend to remove the barriers of intoler- 
ance still separating the monotheistic religious denomi- 
nations. 

Bruno's monument, in a generous and liberal age, 
must form a greater attraction for cultured pilgrims in 
Rome, than all its boasted heathen antiquities. An 
equal decoration to Geneva would be a Protestant mon- 
ument to Servetus. Nor would a monument erected in 
New England by liberal Protestants to victims judi- 
cially sacrificed there by Protestant courts and witnesses 
blinded by religious fanaticism, for the impossible relig- 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 229 

ious crime of witchcraft, shine in future ages with less 
glory than its splendid memorial of Bunker Hill. 

To mark in this way, by other monuments, the de- 
parture of the present age from the errors of past gen- 
erations, would serve to greatly advance the period for a 
general social reformation. 

93. (c) Another question seeks, in regard to the 
general industrial war brought about by former gen- 
erations, a better way; and proposes the means of a gen- 
eral industrial pacification. This end would be pro- 
moted by the adoption of the significant and effective 
popular measure, of practically inaugurating the aban- 
donment of the ancient abuse of the interference of 
government in industrial affairs. 

The present industrial war, aggravated by the par- 
tial interference of government in the affairs of industry, 
can only be composed by the independent and complete 
co-operative and non-belligerent organization of all the 
industrial classes, — the working-men, the employers, the 
capitalists, and the consumers. Happily, while each class 
is too strong to be reduced to subjection by the others 
combined, each is practically benefited by the prosperity 
of all the rest. 

The class of working-men are to a great extent already 
organized, though not on a harmonious, liberal, and far 
reaching industrial principle; and recently, the classes of 
capitalists and employers, in large numbers, have jointly 
contrived and put in operation, with the partial assist- 
ance of the government, a system of combining their 
property and business, on a great scale, in special trust, 
for their joint benefit, in opposition not only to the class 



230 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

of working-men, but also to the class of consumers. But 
the isolated organization of the class of working-men and 
the joint organization of the classes of capitalists and 
employers, are hostile and destructive ; and they mean a 
continuance of the present universal industrial war. 

Now, a measure inaugurating the abandonment of the 
ancient abuse of the interference of the government in 
the affairs of industry, and thus promoting the harmony 
and co-operation of the industrial classes, by proving tlie 
capacity of the republic of industry, as an organized 
whole, to efficiently, liberally, and justly regulate its own 
interests independent of the government, would be to 
add to the separate organizations of the other industrial 
classes a general organization of the class of consumers 
and users, as such, of the productions of industry; but 
containing also bodily, in a great measure, owing to the 
integral nature of industry, the other ideally separated 
industrial classes of working-men, of employers, and of 
capitalists; and thereby representing the general public. 

This general organization of the class of consumers 
would be as fully able, as it would be rationally and pro- 
bably inclined, to balance and control, in strict justice 
and clear reason, the other industrial classes in a general 
system of fair wages, fair interest, fair profits, and fair 
prices. It would especially promote liberal and conserva- 
tive competition, by discountenancing, except in the case 
of temporary overproduction, all unremunerative prices, 
and, in all cases, prices cruelly or unreasonably low; and 
it would thus prevent capitalists and employers from 
ruining each other at the expense of the working-men, 
and by the aid of thoughtless consumers, who would 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 231 

sacrifice, for a trifling present gain, not only vital in- 
terests of producers, but their own future permanent 
convenience. 

This general organization of the class of consumers, to 
control the other industrial classes, and to co-operate 
with them, must rest on the ultimate identity of the 
normal or proper interests of all the industrial classes, as 
required and established by the First Principle, and as 
demonstrated by the science of industrial, as distin- 
guished from political, economy. 

94. (d) Another evil of vast importance, involving a 
renewal of ancient violations of Interrace law, and pro- 
duced by modern legislation in the United States of 
America, is the body of so-called Constitutional amend- 
ments, illegally granting suffrage to the negroes. The 
remedy for this evil must be applied, before a general 
social reformation can be expected; but is embarrassed 
by great respect due to the strong and earnest character 
of the men, now departed, under whose leadership it was 
inflicted, in probable ignorance of its enormity, and even 
in the belief that it was highly meritorious. This rem- 
edy remains to be considered, with all the frankness due 
to its importance. 

The great anti-slavery leaders, the old and staunch 
Abolitionists, to whose burning zeal, tenacity of purpose, 
energy of speech, fearlessness of action, and skilful polit- 
ical generalship, for liberty and humanity, the country 
is indebted for the abolition of slavery, have one by one 
passed away. Some died as martyrs; others as active 
partisans in the dangerous contest for their cause; and 
others in peace and old age, surrounded by reverent 



232 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

neighbors, in a halo, as it were, of local sanctity. Bnt, so 
far as they were zealons and active Abolitionists in their 
public life, and nothing more, they deserve of their coun- 
try and of the world, and they must receive, as high 
honors as any martyrs and saints of modern times. 

It is an undeniable fact, however, that some of them 
went beyond the abolition of slavery, and encouraged 
and sanctioned, without the warrant of experience, the 
action of the Eepublican party in the granting of suffrage 
to the emancipated negroes. If, in this respect, therefore, 
the Abolitionists who did so violated a principle of the 
higher law, they must be treated as common men, liable 
to commit error and do evil, as well as to see the truth 
and do good. They must be content to be classed, not 
as immaculate saints, but as men like the worthies of 
the American revolution, who vindicated one principle 
and violated another, — asserting with immortal glory the 
principle of the sovereignty of the people, and violating 
the principle of personal liberty, by inserting in the Con- 
stitution a recognition of slavery and the slave-trade. 

The abolition of the slavery of the negroes was a legal 
measure, neglected by the great men of the American 
revolution, and for which the Abolitionists, according to 
their share in its promotion, are entitled to all honor; 
because it is in conformity with the higher law de- 
rived from the First Principle, or law of God, of the 
Semitic philosophy. But the granting of suffrage to 
the negroes in the country of the white nation of Amer- 
ica, is easily proved to be illegal, by whomsoever adopted; 
because it is a violation of that higher law, which, as the 
Interrace law, provides that each of the great races of 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 233 

mankind, for the preservation of its separate individu- 
ality and peculiar civilization, shall occupy a separate 
country. 

As it is a matter of history, however, that the party 
of the Abolitionists were few, and were an almost insig- 
nificant ally, in point of numbers, to the Eepublican 
party, at the time of the de facto adoption of the meas- 
ure granting suffrage to the negroes, it seems per- 
missible to treat that measure, not only apart from all 
consideration of the Abolitionists, but also, notwith- 
standing its constitutional form, as the action, under 
very extraordinary circumstances, of the same Eepublican 
party which both at that time controlled the government 
of the United States, and is still, in 1889, after a brief 
overthrow, the great living political party predominant 
in that government. It is the Eepublican party, there- 
fore, that is responsible for that measure, and which, if 
convinced of its illegality and unconstitutionality, must, 
as an honorable association, move to reconsider and 
repeal it. 

The Interrace law is based on the old figurative prov- 
erb used by Paul, that God "hath made of one blood 
all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the 
earth," (Acts xvii., 26); which, in connection with the 
other figurative saying, of at least equal antiquity, that 
"the blood is the life," (Gen. ix., 4, Deut. xii., 23), 
embodies much of ancient wisdom. This proverb is a 
universal proposition, expressing the fact of observation, 
or experience, that all men have a universal physical 
quality, or set of qualities, in their blood, along with 
spiritual qualities of equal universality. It also implies, 



234 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

what modern chemistry has demonstrated, that the blood 
of animals differs from that of man. It is a proposition 
that, by calling attention to a distinctive and striking 
sensuous idea reflected from every man, enabled early 
man to think distinctly of his fellow-men; to group 
them as a whole physically and spiritually different from 
animals; to compare them with each other and note their 
differences as well as their points of resemblance; to 
think of them individually as equals in the most import- 
ant physical and spiritual respects, while differing in 
others; to think of them collectively as a nation of such 
men; to think of nations collectively as a race of such 
nations; and to think of all the races collectively as the 
general family of mankind. 

There is also very ancient evidence, that the outward 
appearance, or color, of the skin, as something outwardly 
permanent and significant respectively, in the different 
races, notwithstanding both the inward oneness of blood 
in men, and their acknowledged general equality, was 
considered to mark a very great and permanent differ- 
ence of character among them. This is what Jeremiah 
must mean when he says: "Can the Ethiopian change 
his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also 
do good that are accustomed to do evil." (Jer. xiii., 
23.) The comparison, according to Hebrew usage, is 
double as well as elliptical. Its point is the difficulty of 
changing character. The Ethiopian and the leopard had 
fixed and unchangeable general traits of character, 
known to all that saw them, by the skin of the one and 
the spots of the other. The unchangeable skin and 
spots are symbolically put in the place of unchangeable 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 235 

character. The meaning of the prophet is that the char- 
acter of him that is accustomed to do evil, is as fixed 
in his evil way as the proverbial general character of the 
Ethiopian or the leopard. 

The races of mankind, thus distinguished by different 
colors of skin, have also been observed to dwell from 
immemorial time in different countries; their local sepa- 
ration being obviously necessary to preserve their respect- 
ive individuality; and being clearly, therefore, like their 
individuality, of divine appointment. For Paul, in the 
same connection in which he says that God "hath 
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all 
the face of the earth," adds immediately "and hath 
determined the times before appointed and the bounds of 
their habitation." 

Hence results the Interrace law that apportions to 
each race of mankind a separate country, with the abso- 
lute right to its exclusive possession, occupancy, and gov- 
ernment. Being evidently involved in the First Prin- 
ciple of the Semitic philosophy, the Interrace law is the 
paramount law of the universal society of the races of 
mankind. 

This Interrace law was violated when the ancestors of 
the negro nation now in America were violently carried 
away, as was notoriously done, from their native country 
in Central Africa. For it is an unquestionable historical 
fact that Central Africa has been occupied from imme- 
morial time by the negro race as its providential native 
country. 

The same Interrace law was violated, when the negro 
nation, whose ancestors were thus illegally brought to 



236 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

America, was permitted, by the grant of suffrage, to par- 
ticipate in the government of the country which was 
acquired by the white nation there, and to whom, 
according to that Interrace law, that country, with its 
government, exclusively belongs. 

It is evident that these two infractions of the Inter- 
race law can only be properly and efficiently remedied, 
and therefore must be remedied, by the return of the 
negro nation in America to the providential native coun- 
try of their race in Central Africa. 

This remedial measure, viewed deliberately, in all its 
magnitude, and in face of its apparently onerous aspect, 
as highly costly, on the part of the white nation of 
America, is proved, by the complicity of their ancestors, 
as shown by the original Constitution of the United 
States, not only in the enslavement, but also in the im- 
portation, and, therefore, in the forcible deportation 
from Africa of the ancestors of the negro nation now in 
America, to be for that white nation a political and 
legal, as well as a moral and natural, obligation. 

The emancipation of the negroes has made no amends 
to them for the debt due them for the injury of depriv- 
ing them, in their ancestors, of their native country; 
and as the grant of suffrage to them, in a country not 
their own, is illegal, it is false money, and both parties 
incur guilt by its use; while, if it was intended to pay 
the debt due to the negroes for the deprivation of their 
country, this debt remains unpaid with interest. 

But the measure of restoring the negroes to their own 
original home in Central Africa, and assuring them there 
an ample, fertile, healthful, and independent country, by 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 237 

the white nation of America, has for both races, like all 
great measures of liberal statesmanship, affecting two dis- 
tinct but rightful interests, a mutually beneficial aspect. 
Little need be said of its obvious material advantages to 
both parties. While the negro nation would acquire, by 
the just generosity of the white nation of America, the 
means of colonizing and possessing, as their own ances- 
tral property, a country in the old land suited to their 
nature, with independence, and social as well as political 
equality, and also affording not only ample reward for all 
useful labor, and the energizing stimulation of estab- 
lishing new and permanent homes, but also all the prizes 
of legitimate social, industrial, and political ambition; 
the white nation of America would receive, in return, 
the benefit of a homogeneous population, increased value 
of its land, and room, equivalent to new territory, for 
seven millions of white immigrants to take the places 
of the departing negroes, besides the industrial activity 
incidental to the movement, and to the wise expenditure 
it would necessitate of large sums in ship-building, com- 
merce, manufactures, and agricultural produce. 

But the chief benefit of this measure would be 
spiritual, or moral, religious, and intellectual; and this 
would consist in its efficacy to facilitate in the two races, 
both the present preservation and the future development 
of their respective modes and measures of civilization. 

There is only one normal civilization, which is the 
knowledge and the practical realization of the First 
Principle of the Semitic philosophy, or doctrine of the 
Kingdom of G-od. But there are several degrees, grades, 
or steps of civilization attained, respectively, by the 



238 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

different races of mankind, and all tending to the one 
normal civilization; all capable likewise of being gradually 
developed into it, and all being analogous to the shades 
of culture reached by individuals. Nations, like chil- 
dren, must begin civilization with its rudiments. The 
true normal civilization must be developed in the nations, 
as children, by the system of exciting sensuous ideas by 
object lessons, and by leading instinctive thought, with 
these and other related sensuous ideas, from something 
like Frcebers Kindergarten exercises to a more or less 
thorough acquaintance with, and exercise of, the First 
Principle in advanced schools and universities, and in 
enlightened social institutions and modes of general 
social life. 

The one uniform normal civilization, developed accord- 
ing to the First Principle, must be the ideal of civiliza- 
tion for all the races in their universal society. While it 
may admit of modifications in matters of indifference, it 
must at least embrace, in the First Principle, the original 
and continuing social contract of God with man, the 
normal social organization, and the moral or higher law. 

The white race, as a whole, although, owing to its gen- 
eral monotheistic idolatry, its prevalent vice of drunk- 
enness, its demoralizing lotteries, and its offensive wars, 
it is still very far from that ideal, has so far made, of all 
the races, the nearest approach to it. But this race is 
bound to make great strides of self-improvement, before 
it becomes worthy and able to convert, by its missionary 
enterprises, the other races to the true standard of civili- 
zation. It must also change its missionary methods, and, 
instead of degrading the Bible by translating it into 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 239 

inartificial heathenish jargons, some of which are also 
vile, it should teach modern civilization, including Chris- 
tianity, in one of the civilized modern languages, in every 
one of which a great part of it is embodied, just as the 
old Latin civilization was taught in Europe for centuries 
by means of the Latin language. Perhaps, for many 
reasons, and especially because it is most widely known, 
the best suited of the modern languages to teach modern 
civilization is the English. 

Now, in view of the different degrees of civilization 
prevailing in different races, the local combination and 
cohabitation of two different degrees of civilization 
in the same country, may be rationally expected, like 
the joining of scholars of different degrees of pro- 
ficiency in the same class in school, to be hurtful to 
both; checking the advance of one, and driving the 
other on too rapidly. In the lower, it tends, first, to 
promote the vices, which are easily learned, and thereby 
to obstruct the more difficult task of assuming the vir- 
tues, of the higher civilization; and especially is this 
the result where the two degrees of civilization meet in 
two different races, as is clearly illustrated by the disas- 
trous contact of the white man with the red man, and 
the gradual extinction of the latter, in America. In the 
higher civilization, too, in which, even when it is isolated, 
vices, as survivals of an earlier degree of barbarism, may 
abound in some of its individuals of every class, the 
advent of the lower civilization, besides re-inf orcing such 
vices, may re-introduce still more barbarous or even sav- 
age vices, which the higher has already outgrown; as 
was seen when the savage ancestors of the present negroes 



240 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

in America were forcibly brought into the white nation 
there,, bringing with them slavery, which the whites had 
long ago abandoned, and which caused among the whites, 
for its abolition, one of the most tremendous civil wars 
history has recorded. Such are the effects of combining 
in the same country, in different races, different degrees 
of civilization. 

He must be blind, indeed, who does not see that in 
measure and degree the civilization of the negroes is dif- 
ferent from that of the white men in the United States 
of America. There are, it is true, a few exceptional 
negroes of culture and industry, who can rank in 
these respects with the majority of the whites; and many 
more of a morality and a piety as high as those of 
the best of the whites; and there are some exceptional 
whites who demean themselves as fit associates for the 
lowest of the negroes. But the signs of the superior 
civilization of the majority of the whites are unmistak- 
ably displayed wherever large numbers of whites and 
negroes live close together, as in the cities of the north, 
and in the cities and fields of the south. 

Hence, as negro civilization in America is inferior to 
that of the whites living with them, the violation of the 
Interrace law by negro suffrage there, must reasonably 
be anticipated to strengthen the influence of the inferior 
negro civilization, and thereby to degrade the superior 
civilization of the whites, to the manifest prejudice of 
both races. For, since the freedom of the negroes and 
all the rights of person and of property which they now 
enjoy in America are due alone to the civilization of 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 241 

the whites, if that civilization should be degraded, few 
rights would be left to the negroes. 

Moreover, the degradation of the civilization of the 
whites by negro suffrage, will not only affect the whites 
in the states where the negro population predominates, 
by affiliation of negroes with the whites of their own 
level, but in all the states. For instance, the state of 
Louisiana, with a large and influential negro popula- 
tion, has established and sanctioned, by the public 
authority of that state, in opposition to the civilization 
of the whites, a system of public lotteries, designed to 
gratify the immoral savage passion of gambling, which 
is condemned by the other states as criminal; and that 
public institution of the state of Louisiana, by sur- 
reptitiously circulating in other states its tickets and 
its illusive advertisements, in violation of their laws, is 
successful in daily debauching the public morals and 
plundering the weak and unwary in all the other states, 
where otherwise the civilization of the whites in this 
matter prevails. 

The true policy, therefore, for all the states, is by con- 
stitutional amendment, or by a decision of the supreme 
court, or otherwise, as they may agree, to recognize and 
declare according to the paramount Interrace law, the 
illegality of the suffrage of negroes in the country of the 
whites. 

But, when the Interrace law is obeyed, the separate 
and different degrees of civilization of the different races, 
in their respective separate countries, may all differ, and 
yet may all be good in their kind. For no one that 
observes the regular variety of things, as well as the 



242 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

uniformity of laws, in the organic and inorganic worlds, 
noting that no two stars, no two grains of sand, no two 
leaves, no two fruits, no two animals, are exactly alike, 
but that every separate thing is endowed with a special 
individuality, can doubt, that, as the apple tree, the pear 
tree, the orange tree, the palm tree, while all follow the 
general laws and processes of vegetation, produce differ- 
ent fruits, all being good, and each having its different 
individual excellence; so the great races of mankind, the 
white, the Mongolian, the Hindoo, the negro, while all 
obey their fundamental laws involved in the First Prin- 
ciple, will each, in time, work out, and mark with its 
special individuality, a separate and distinctive, rival 
degree or kind of civilization. To attain, however, their 
peculiar development, the different races of mankind 
must dwell in separate countries. 

Civilization does not, like electricity, pass by induc- 
tion from one body, collective or individual, to another; 
although the marks on the sensuous ideas, the elements 
of civilization, are reflected by an analogous process from 
their outward objects. Civilization can only be conferred 
on, or improved in, an individual or a nation by rational 
and persistent educational work on one side, with earnest 
co-operation on the other. Colonization, for a large body, 
as the bringing up of a nation, directing and developing 
its powers, and supplying its needs by another from 
helpless infancy, until it is able to make its own destiny, 
is evidently for both parties, the best and most stimu- 
lating educational work. For improving the inchoate 
civilization already acquired by the American negroes, 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 243 

their colonization in Central Africa by the white nation 
of America is evidently the proper means. 

To facilitate the development of a true negro civiliza- 
tion by colonizing the American negroes in Central Africa, 
and to protect it there from hostile interference of the 
whites,, the diplomacy and the Congress of the United 
States of America should assert the supreme authority of 
the Interrace law, by insisting not only that the sale of 
intoxicants and arms by a superior race to savages should 
be included in the definition of piracy, but also that 
Central Africa, having been immemorially the natural or 
providential habitat of the negro race, belongs to that 
race exclusively. And the United States of America 
should claim, by treaty with the nations of Europe, or 
by a constitutional amendment, the authority to protect 
the negro nation growing from the colony of American 
negroes, in its right to select, acquire and exclusively 
occupy and govern an ample, well located, and inde- 
pendent country in the central portion of Africa; not the 
least commendation of which establishment would be its 
agency in spreading light over the Dark Continent. 

For this new African state, both for example and for 
warning, the experience of Liberia, Hayti, and San 
Domingo, in regard to negro civilization, should be con- 
sulted. The general legal profession, when organized, 
could greatly aid this enterprise by preparing for the 
consideration of the new African state a brief code of 
universal positive common law, suggested by the expe- 
rience of all civilized nations, and fit for their adoption. 

95. Besides the difficulties now specifically men- 
tioned, the chief general cause of the slow, vacillating, 



244 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

halting progress of the civilization of society, in all the 
races of mankind, is the fact that most men lack, and 
have always lacked, liberal culture, all-sided views; and 
are narrow-minded, with a contracted, one-sided outlook, 
being men either generally ignorant, or mere specialists, 
following exclusively one idea, one subordinate principle, 
and ignoring, or even antagonizing, all else. The re- 
moval of this one-sidedness must be the work of the 
liberal culture that will result from the pursuit of the 
one First Principle of the Semitic philosophy, in which 
principle all other principles are involved. 

This pursuit, in which, with moderate success, the 
masses of mankind, by means of their sensuous ideas and 
their instinctive thought, aided by a public common edu- 
cation, can unite with the learned, will yield a unitary 
and universal all round view of all things; not based on 
the one supposed element of the ancient Greek, but on 
the one composed of many, the American e pluribus 
unum, the organic one, the integral one, the one of God, 
one universe, one humanity, one social contract, one 
republic of letters and art, one republic of the church, 
one republic of industry, one republic of charity, one 
republic of government, one republic of all these repub- 
lics; one social order, one order of the universe. 

This view will also result in one rational general con- 
clusion of that enlightened and energized reason, which 
is speculative faith, from all the past and present, by 
analogy, to all the future, — from life to immortality, 
from unceasing social progress, however unsteady, to the 
one ultimate and perfect Kingdom of God here and here- 
after, as the ideal society. 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 245 

But it would be idle to expect to overthrow at once, 
or in a generation, or in a century, all the heathenism of 
the world, or of the white race, or even of its most 
favored nation, or most liberal church, or most orthodox. 
The accretions of eighteen hundred years of deleterious 
ancient Oriental heathenism must be stripped from the 
slender growth of original Christianity, before the 
shriveled and stunted plant can nourish, in its appointed 
way, like the vine of Egypt, or the tree of life. 

It must be acknowledged, however, that civilization 
in the last few centuries, and especially Christianity, its 
distinguishing element, notwithstanding the counteract- 
ing influence of heathenism, has made some progress, 
although the road to its ultimate perfection is still a long 
one. The next century bids fair to make at least as great 
an advance of civilization among the masses, not only of 
the leading race, but of all the partially civilized races, in 
respect of philosophy, of science and of art, as well as of 
morality and religion, beyond the nineteenth century, as 
this century made over the eighteenth, and as the eight- 
eenth made over all the centuries that went before it. 

But the work to be done in the next century in fur- 
therance of civilization, of liberal culture, and of pure 
Christianity, should be outlined and prepared as well as 
forecasted in the present. To consider well therefore, 
and to lay down firmly arid understandingly, the plans of 
the coming era of social progress, in thorough public 
education from the lowest to the highest grades, and to 
provide for its sure direction a wide and certain outlook 
in a popular true philosophy, — is the duty of the present 
day. 



246 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Even the work of many future centuries of social 
progress can be read at this time in an embryonic form 
in the First Principle of the Kingdom of God, or 
Semitic philosophy, which, when properly appealed to, 
will yield all the true oracles needed for the instruction 
and the guidance of all coming generations. 

Accordingly, its influence in the recent universal and 
almost silent revolution of Brazil in favor of the prin- 
ciple of civil representative democracy, indicates the 
Providential drift, as well as the irresistible power of the 
instinctive thought of the masses of the people, when 
it is properly directed by their leaders. This movement, 
as Canada is only nominally monarchical, virtually closes 
in triumph the westward march of the star of the true 
empire of the people; and vindicates the whole western 
hemisphere for the principle of civil representative 
democracy, with all the social reforms in Church and 
State which this principle necessarily involves. While, 
therefore, the closing decade of this century may now 
witness, as the sequel of this event, the consolidation and 
security of all the true American international interests 
of the western hemisphere — effected, not only by means 
of the present Pan-American Congress, but also by occa- 
sional future liberal international American conven- 
tions — the next century will be prepared, throughout all 
the borders of the Eastern Hemisphere, in Europe, 
Australia, and wherever else the white race dwells, 
among the colored races in India, China and Japan, 
and even in a future mighty nation of American negroes 
in Central Africa, to welcome the beneficent controlling 
power of the universal principle of civil representative 



SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 247 

democracy, as exhibited in its shining example of 
fraternally united free America. 



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